By GARRY HOWE
PERCIVAL Beadle didn’t live long in Officer, and that was more than a century ago.
Yet the townsfolk have not forgotten him.
P. Beadle is the first name inscribed in the Memorial Gates at the Officer Recreation Reserve, which were re-dedicated in a special Remembrance Day ceremony on Wednesday.
Percy was the youngest child of Mary Beadle, who moved to the area from Brighton North around 1912. Her husband Charles died when Percy was only 12.
Within a couple of years the Great War had broken out in Europe and the district’s young men were enlisting in droves.
Percy was only 17 at the time, but he was so keen to serve he lied about his age and somehow convinced his mother to give consent.
He joined the 24th Battalion and sailed out on 10 May, 1915, on board the HMAT Euripides, bound for the Middle East.
Percy soon found himself on the battlefields at Gallipoli, until a bout of pneumonia had him on a hospital ship to Malta, then to a convalescent camp in London.
When he recovered, Percy had a brief furlough in Scotland and then rejoined his company in France.
A report in the Berwick Shire News in February, 1917, said that he had been fighting continually in France since March the previous year and “had won his two stripes (a rank of corporal) on the battlefield for good work when he had reached his 20th birthday on 17 November last”.
He died of wounds received in battle on 17 January, 1917, and the sad news was delivered to his mother a week later.
The Shire News said his death came as a great shock to all.
“He was much loved by those who knew him,” the report said.
His grandniece Rosemary Miles, who attended the rededication ceremony on Wednesday with her partner Greg, travelled to France last year on a Battlefields of World War I tour and found his grave.
“Sadly, we don’t even have a photo of him,” Ms Miles said.
Also there on Wednesday was Betty Whiteside, whose father Clair Whiteside returned from the war to serve on council for many years, and it was his initiative to establish the Memorial Gates at Officer.
“We owe so much to these fellows,” Ms Whiteside remarked after the official proceedings.
Other names remembered on the gates are World War I casualties A. Davies, W. Johnstone, James and Mervyn Lecky, J. Osborne, E. Prior, K. Skellett, Clive Were and L. Whitney.
The Lecky boys belonged to a pioneering family and their loss so close to the end of the war in the battlefields of France so devastated their parents that they moved from the district.
The Memorial Gates also honour five local casualties of World War II – W.A. Clark, J.R. Hasker, J.S. Robinson, A.J. Simmons and W.A. Swift.
The gates had to be moved last year to accommodate roadworks at the recreation reserve corner and the new and improved gates were opened in time for the Anzac Centenary service.
The rededication ceremony on Wednesday was conducted by Reverend Ann Simons and was based on the program for the original dedication on Remembrance Day, 1951.
Officer Community Association president Rob Porter thanked townspeople – past and present – for turning out, and John Tivendale read the Ode.
Officer Primary School students sang the national anthem and several other schools were also represented.
