THE scars of the Great War run deep in many families as Dandenong RSL sub-branch president John Wells knows all too well.
Mr Wells’s grandmother lost two of her brothers in World War I.
Their deaths left his great-grandmother demented by grief.
“Grandma’s mother went quite odd,” Mr Wells said.
“She got to the point that if she saw a policeman or a minister she would attack them, because twice they’d come to her door to say that she’d lost a son.”
Joseph Stanley Saxon, Mr Wells’s great uncle, was one of four brothers from Euroa who served in WWI.
Joseph was 18 when he embarked from Melbourne on board HMAT A35 Berrima with the 22nd Battalion on 28 June 1915.
He was killed in action at Pozieres on 4 August 1915 and has no known grave.
His brother Bertie Henry Saxon enlisted aged 24 on 10 May 1916 and embarked from Melbourne on board HMAT A10 Karroo on 18 September 1916 with the 2nd Pioneer Battalion.
He was wounded in Tincourt, France, and died of his injuries on 6 October 1918, aged 27.
Thomas Abraham Saxon and Frederick William Saxon returned home safely.
As did Mr Wells’s uncle on his grandfather’s side, with whom he shared his name but affectionately called him Uncle Jack.
The printer from Brisbane, Queensland, was 35 when he embarked aboard HMAT A36 Boonah on 21 October 1916.
“He got shot twice and he got gassed twice. He got locked up for four days because he broke into a hotel and stole alcohol,” he said.
“He got charged with breaking into it and breaking out of it. I think that’s a bit rough, it’s really one crime!
“He was so shell shocked that if we went rabbit shooting on the farm at Longwarry he would go inside and all the doors in the house had to be shut so he couldn’t hear the guns.
“He had a bad war.”
And then there’s James Carlyle Wells Affleck.
“I’m John Carlyle Wells, and the eldest male in my family is either James Carlyle or John Carlyle, right down to my grandchildren,” he said.
“I’ve never heard the name Affleck, but he comes from Woodend, where the family was, he was a Presbyterian which we were.
“There’s definitely a family connection.
“A lot of people who went to the war appended a different surname so that their parents didn’t know they’d enlisted or their wives didn’t know, or a girlfriend they were getting away from didn’t know, or their debtor didn’t know.
“I’m going to find this James Carlyle Wells Affleck.”
– Casey Neill
