Major Alfred Allen, Australian War Graves Service

[melliget]

Appended to a report on the visit of the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Bruce, to the war graves of Australian soldiers in France and Gallipoli in 1924, there is an additional piece on the work of Major Alfred Allen and the Australian War Graves Service following the war (pp. 23 - 31).

http://naa12.naa.gov.au/scripts/imagine.as...mp;I=1&SE=1

"A Quaker, a non-drinker, non-smoker, non-swearer, a born

leader of men, with a most remarkable memory, an intuitive per-

ception of possibilities, and a mind trained to minute observa-

tion and deduction, no finer man could have been chosen for the

arduous post he fills. Not many could do his work as he does

it. Nothing less than the loftiest sense of duty and a keenly

sympathetic understanding of the urgency of what he is doing

could carry him through with it."

John Oxenham, a writer (real name William Arthur Dunkerley), wrote this about Major Allen. More recently, Bruce Scates, in his book "Return to Gallipoli: walking the battlefields of the Great War", 2006, says the article was "contrived to give comfort to the families of missing men back home in Australia". That may have been so. Nevertheless, an interesting glimpse into the work done by the AWGS in locating and indentifying the remains of Australia's soldiers on the battlefields of France.

regards,

Martin