A young Tallangatta soldier’s death 100 years ago this month has been remembered separately by descendants unknown to each other.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Thomas Henry Mulholland, 24, died of his wounds in France on August 23, 1918, having been injured by a shell and also gassed.
His grave lies in Heath Cemetery, Picardie, France.
A memorial notice marking the centenary of his death in The Border Mail last week caught the attention of Private Mulholland’s great-great-niece Kylie Macreadie, of Wodonga.
“I guess most families have somebody that they can follow through and be aware of and Thomas was a person in our family who didn’t come home,” she said.
Mrs Macreadie, her mother and grandmother were surprised to see the tribute and keen to contact the person who placed it.
“As generations go by, families get extended out,” she said.
“It’s a curiosity to think somebody else has that connection still to have actually gone and made that effort to put that notice in all these years later.”
The Border Mail has not been able to reach the North East woman who submitted the remembrance.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:
Mrs Macreadie particularly wished to get in touch because she and her family saw Private Mulholland’s final resting place in April while visiting her brother and his family, who live in France.
“It was part of my mission, this time we’d go and find where Thomas’ grave was because we didn’t know if anyone had ever been before, and knowing that it was 100 years,” she said.
The Macreadies laid poppies from the Australian War Memorial in Canberra at the site on what was a moving occasion.
“Emotional in the sense I have two sons, I have twin seven-year-olds, to imagine letting your sons go all that way and to know that my brother and his wife and girls now have the freedom to live in a country like that, I guess it makes that connection a bit real,” Mrs Macreadie said.
Their trip emphasised the French people have not forgotten the sacrifices made a century ago.
“The graves are amazingly well kept by the people there and in front of each headstone there’s different plants growing there,” she said.
The family would like to pass on these memories to those who also honour Private Mulholland’s memory.
“For me it was wanting them to know that we’d actually been there and found Thomas’ grave, to be able to share that,” Mrs Macreadie said.
“I hope we hear from her, so that we can hand on those photos as well that we took while we were there, just to be able to include someone else who clearly thought it was significant.”
- Receive our daily newsletter straight to your inbox each morning from The Border Mail. Sign up here