{"id":7376,"date":"2015-09-24T02:56:57","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T15:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=7376"},"modified":"2018-10-27T18:40:25","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T07:40:25","slug":"frederick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=7376","title":{"rendered":"Frederick Burley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walter Burley had two wives and seven children.\u00a0 His wives had short lives, and four of his children died in infancy.\u00a0 The three who survived to manhood, Alfred, James<\/a> and Frederick, went to France to fight in World War One, even Alfred who had his own wife and six children.\u00a0 Fortunately for them he returned.\u00a0 Pity about Alfred’s two brothers who enlisted in the army together, numbers 5046 and 5047, for both their lives ended in France in 1917.\u00a0 With all his siblings dead, Alfred came home to Australia in 1919 to find his wifeless father, Walter, was also dead and gone.\u00a0 All of Alfred’s original family were in the ground.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

I learned this little story of big losses through the Australian War Memorial’s prompting.\u00a0 It’s reminding us nightly, from sunset to sunrise, that 62,000 Australians died in the fight that was World War One.\u00a0 Walter’s sons, Frederick and James, are on the Honour Roll currently being projected onto the Memorial’s facade.\u00a0 They are two of my grandparents’ cousins who did not return from France, so I’ve been zipping over to the Memorial to catch the names as they appear.\u00a0 This month it’s Frederick’s turn.<\/p>\n

I’ve read the army records, including a few letters and the immediate family history, of Frederick and his brothers.\u00a0 I’m struck by the number of deaths that left Alfred the only standing family member.<\/p>\n

The abundance of our ancestors’ details now available means we’re discovering their long-forgotten joys and losses.\u00a0 But look closely;\u00a0 there are even a few of their untruths.\u00a0 Frederick’s details on the Roll reveal that, when he was young, he wished he was younger;\u00a0 the Memorial records his age at death as 24, but he was born in 1887, which in 1917 made him 30…\u00a0 Frederick died and was buried in April 1917 at Vaulx-Vraucourt, Pas de Calais, forever youngish.\u00a0 He lied to the Australian Army, but he can’t lie to me because his birth details are these days online for all the world to see.<\/p>\n

These Burley men were my first cousins three times removed.\u00a0 I snapped this photo of Frederick’s name at 8:05pm one evening a couple of weeks ago, when it shone for 30 seconds.\u00a0 In June 2016 his brother’s name, J.E. Burley, will be projected.\u00a0 I’ve marked it in my diary.<\/p>\n

\"Frederick
Frederick Miles Burley, Honour Roll name projection, Australian War Memorial, 8th September 2015<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The names of three other men, my grandfather’s cousins George<\/a>, Frank<\/a> and D’Arcey<\/a>, were projected onto the Memorial during this year’s cold, starry winter evenings.\u00a0 The significance of all this for me?\u00a0 My grandfather also went to France, but he was a cousin who returned.\u00a0 His name, like Alfred Burley’s, is not one of the 62,000 being projected, 30 times over 4 years, beneath the dome of the Memorial.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walter Burley had two wives and seven children.\u00a0 His wives had short lives, and four of his children died in infancy.\u00a0 The three who survived to manhood, Alfred, James and Frederick, went to France to fight in World War One, even Alfred who had his own wife and six children.\u00a0 Fortunately for them he returned.\u00a0 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Frederick Burley”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[579,20,1371],"tags":[793,728,105,794,779,7,8,21,795],"class_list":["post-7376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canberra","category-my-photos","category-world-war-one","tag-australian-family-history","tag-australian-war-memorial","tag-canberra","tag-frederick-miles-burley","tag-honour-roll","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaday","tag-walter-burley"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7376"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11777,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7376\/revisions\/11777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}