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Old 09-09-14, 01:41
Catherine Catherine is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2014
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Thanks Diane, I will be in touch.

Meanwhile, here's a glimpse of Cleve Page in camp at Mena at the end of March 1915, celebrating with his mates because they'd just heard they were finally going off to war. They're the first. The Australians training at Mena had begun to fear that the a British command didn't think they were good enough to send into battle.

By his mate, Tom Drane:

Feb 28 1915
Told we are to leave Mena Camp on Sunday March 1st. That is good we are going to celebrate it tonight in the canteen. There goes Cookie with his ballads, he is properly wound up with two pints of beer. ... Allo, there goes Page right over the seat, singing “Who where you with last night” and “Get out and get under”. .. Old Boller Freebairn wants to be kissing everyone; Will Harvey wants to be Robbie Burns. Mansfield wants to be a comic singer, but what a failure he is. Cookie has gone to sleep and his snore seems to anoy me very much, and I have just given him a crack. Hello what’s this Harvey thinks he is Jack Johnson he wants to bash in someone’s head. At last there is a little order in the house, ah I spoke to soon, here is Freebairn walking over everyone to come and tell us he wants to be friends, and will we shake hands. I don’t know about shaking hands, I got his heel in my little Mary, and he is no light weight. Anyhow on Sunday we leave for somewhere."

Go to http://youtu.be/fNZSjSOOVxQ if you want to sing along with Cleve and his mates.

Freebairn died with Page on the beach eight weeks later. A week after the landing Drane had his kneecap blown off in Shrapnel Valley, Will Harvey was also in hospital and Mansfield was soon to join them. Cookie survived to earn a Commission in the Infantry in 1917, but was killed just two weeks after taking up his new post at Passchedale. Drane, Harvey and Mansfield survived the war. Mansfield returned to Anzac Cove sixty years later and told a documentary crew how the engineers landed and died there.

Freebairn and Page are still together. Their gravestones are side by side in Shrapnel Valley.

Not succeeding in posting a photo
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