They answered the call

Members of the Narre Warren and District Family History Group on a previous cemetery walk at Cranbourne. They hope to get good numbers to this Sunday's walk focussing on World War I Diggers buried there.

A soldier who signed up at 13, another who said he was 50 but closer to a decade older than that and seven members of the one extended family are among the 112 World War I Diggers buried at Cranbourne Cemetery.
The intrepid investigators of The Narre Warren and District Family History Group have completed their latest project, unearthing the stories behind the gravestones in district cemeteries to mark the centenary of the Great War.
They had already recorded the stories of 290 men and women from Berwick, Pakenham and Harkaway to coincide with Cemetery Walks and the publication of books in those towns over the past three years.
This year they turned their attention to Cranbourne and a Cemetery Walk on Sunday 22 April and accompanying book will tell the World War I tales of another 111 men and another nurse from 65 local families.
The walk and book are titled They Answered The Call: a World War I Walk in Cranbourne Cemetery.
Two of the soldiers buried at Cranbourne didn’t even make it to the battlefields, dying while at the Seymour training camp. Nine died in France, six in Belgium, one at Gallipoli and one on Lemnos.
Five enlisted aged 18, the eldest to enlist said he was 50 but was closer to 60. Two enlisted with an alias.
The first to enlist was H. Smethurst on 18 August 1914; the first death was W. Thyer on 29 August 1915.
Two career soldiers served in two wars, a 13-year-old enlisted in the Navy and served continuously for 44 years and in both World War I and II.
One soldier was a prisoner of the Germans, one soldier survived the battlefields of the Western Front only to die as a civilian prisoner of the Japanese in World War II.
Nurse Robertson served at the same time as her two brothers, while the extended Ridgway family waited for seven men to return.
Twenty-eight sets of brothers enlisted, four men were wounded three or more times and five soldiers returned home accompanied by their new wives.
Some of the returned men took up Soldier Settlement blocks. Others involved themselves in the local community life on many committees and with the newly established Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia (RSSILA).
One mother had 10 sons, the eldest four enlisted in World War I only two returned, then in World War II she waited while her three youngest went to the battlefields and thankfully all returned.
“All these men and women are part of the collective story that is our local community’s involvement in World War I,” said Narre Warren and District Family History Group member Jane Rivett-Carnac.
The walk is on Sunday 22 April 2018 at 10am at Cranbourne Cemetery corner of Sladen Street and Cemetery Road, Cranbourne. The cost is $5 per adult payable on the day.
For more information about the book or to attend the walk please email cemetery.tours@nwfhg.org.au or contact the Narre Warren and District Family History Group at the Cranbourne Library 1/65 Berwick Cranbourne Road, Cranbourne. www.nwfhg.org.au