digrar
06-24-2005, 09:36 AM
RIP Digger.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=53677
No longer can any Australian tell you with the authority of personal experience about the worst killing fields Australians have known - the slaughter yards of the western front in WWI.
Peter Casserly, who has died in Perth aged 107, was the last Australian survivor of that carnage.
His death leaves only two other WWI veterans alive in this country - 106-year-old John Ross and former Royal Australian Navy sailor William Allan, 105.
"I had lots of good mates but they're all gone," Mr Casserly, the last Digger to see action in France, told an interviewer last year.
Mr Casserly, who transported troops and ammunition at Ypres, Armentieres and Amiens, can never shake the memory of carting young soldiers off to certain death.
"They had no idea of how terrible it was," he said.
"I used to look at their young faces and think of their mothers.
"Next day most of them would just be blood and bandages.
"Wherever you looked there would be these poor buggers on the side of the road, all wanting cigarettes, all busted up, some with arms and legs gone."
The daily grind of WWI, though, was nothing spectacular.
"It was just warfare as warfare goes," he said of the trench battles that claimed 48,000 Australian lives - more than in the whole of WWII.
Mr Casserly had half a dozen close shaves, with bullets whizzing past his ears and shells exploding over his troop train.
One landed, but did not explode, in the middle of a group playing cards.
"So I just dealt another hand of euchre," he said in typically laconic Digger style.
Ever lonelier since his wife of almost 81 years, Filipino-born Monica, died in August 2004, he prefers to forget about the fighting.
He would rather think of his old mates, and the tots of rum that now sustain him in old age as they once did in battle.
Soldiers on the western front got two issues of rum a day, but old hands like Mr Casserly knew how to cadge three.
"You would go up over into no-man's-land and that's where this rum business comes into it - a bit of Dutch courage," he recalled in a recent birthday interview at his Perth nursing home.
"I have a drop of rum every day now.
"I don't know if it's my secret, but it certainly hasn't killed me.
"If you feel the 'flu coming on, take some rum and in two days it's gone."
Mr Casserly, like many of his generation, lied about his age when he enlisted in 1917 claiming to be 21, then used what he calls "ocean post" - a message in a bottle - to tell his mother all about it.
The bottle he dropped into the sea from his troop ship off Fremantle eventually washed ashore more than 700km away at Esperance, where a woman who found it posted it to his mum in Perth.
"I was just saying 'Bye-bye and good luck to you mum' and so forth," said Mr Casserly.
"My mother knew I had enlisted but she didn't know much more."
Mr Casserly, born on January 28, 1898 and one of 11 children, was a blacksmith's apprentice, railway fireman, wharf worker and cray fisherman in civilian life before opening his own woodyard.
He was awarded a Royal Humane Society certificate for rescuing a sailor from the water.
Both of his sons served in the army in WWII.
Eddie died 20 years ago but Peter Jnr, now in his 80s, remains close by, along with Mr Casserly's seven grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
Mr Casserly had lost much of his hearing and almost all of his sight but his sense of humour has remained intact.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=53677
No longer can any Australian tell you with the authority of personal experience about the worst killing fields Australians have known - the slaughter yards of the western front in WWI.
Peter Casserly, who has died in Perth aged 107, was the last Australian survivor of that carnage.
His death leaves only two other WWI veterans alive in this country - 106-year-old John Ross and former Royal Australian Navy sailor William Allan, 105.
"I had lots of good mates but they're all gone," Mr Casserly, the last Digger to see action in France, told an interviewer last year.
Mr Casserly, who transported troops and ammunition at Ypres, Armentieres and Amiens, can never shake the memory of carting young soldiers off to certain death.
"They had no idea of how terrible it was," he said.
"I used to look at their young faces and think of their mothers.
"Next day most of them would just be blood and bandages.
"Wherever you looked there would be these poor buggers on the side of the road, all wanting cigarettes, all busted up, some with arms and legs gone."
The daily grind of WWI, though, was nothing spectacular.
"It was just warfare as warfare goes," he said of the trench battles that claimed 48,000 Australian lives - more than in the whole of WWII.
Mr Casserly had half a dozen close shaves, with bullets whizzing past his ears and shells exploding over his troop train.
One landed, but did not explode, in the middle of a group playing cards.
"So I just dealt another hand of euchre," he said in typically laconic Digger style.
Ever lonelier since his wife of almost 81 years, Filipino-born Monica, died in August 2004, he prefers to forget about the fighting.
He would rather think of his old mates, and the tots of rum that now sustain him in old age as they once did in battle.
Soldiers on the western front got two issues of rum a day, but old hands like Mr Casserly knew how to cadge three.
"You would go up over into no-man's-land and that's where this rum business comes into it - a bit of Dutch courage," he recalled in a recent birthday interview at his Perth nursing home.
"I have a drop of rum every day now.
"I don't know if it's my secret, but it certainly hasn't killed me.
"If you feel the 'flu coming on, take some rum and in two days it's gone."
Mr Casserly, like many of his generation, lied about his age when he enlisted in 1917 claiming to be 21, then used what he calls "ocean post" - a message in a bottle - to tell his mother all about it.
The bottle he dropped into the sea from his troop ship off Fremantle eventually washed ashore more than 700km away at Esperance, where a woman who found it posted it to his mum in Perth.
"I was just saying 'Bye-bye and good luck to you mum' and so forth," said Mr Casserly.
"My mother knew I had enlisted but she didn't know much more."
Mr Casserly, born on January 28, 1898 and one of 11 children, was a blacksmith's apprentice, railway fireman, wharf worker and cray fisherman in civilian life before opening his own woodyard.
He was awarded a Royal Humane Society certificate for rescuing a sailor from the water.
Both of his sons served in the army in WWII.
Eddie died 20 years ago but Peter Jnr, now in his 80s, remains close by, along with Mr Casserly's seven grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
Mr Casserly had lost much of his hearing and almost all of his sight but his sense of humour has remained intact.