Lost voices still heard in Koonwarra
13 Jul 07
Koonwarra Memorial Park Committee members from left, Ken Caithness, Harry Prosser, Robert Hall and John Davison, with the plaques that honour the town's two soldiers who died on active service.
This article was first published in The Great Southern Star on June 19, 2007.
Lost voices still heard in Koonwarra - By Jane Ross
There's a poignancy that pervades war memorials, be they cenotaphs, halls or parks, that nudges the visitor into reflection.
Pause long enough and you can hear those young men and women playing as carefree children, see their handsome, clean cut faces as they march off into the unknown, grieve as they return, if they return, changed forever in their bodies, their psyches. Their legacy is our freedom and we dare not forget their sacrifice.
Koonwarra sent 51 young men off to World War II and only two were lost. They were Private Harry A. Millsom and Private Robert William, or Bob Barguss.
Each is honoured with a plaque on the black wrought iron gates of Koonwarra's Memorial Park. And arching over those gates and plaques is a new stainless steel sign denoting the park's purpose. There's a new picnic table too.
The men of the Memorial Park Committee are lead by Koonwarra's sole surviving digger, Harry Prosser. Harry's nearly 85, but he's not one of the originals. That accolade is Fred Holt's. He lives in Leongatha now, but he retains an interest in the park and is the custodian of its history.
He was the one who knew that the park was officially opened on November 15 1953, by MP Bill Buckingham, himself a Koonwarra son.
The stories of Bob Barguss and Harry Millsom are heart-rending and have been recorded by Koonwarra identity Ken Caithness, whose parents Norm and Olive Caithness knew them well.
Bob and his wife Hellina, ran a dairy farm on a property between Caithness and Minns roads. In those days, it was known as Bunkers Hill.
Bob enlisted in May 1941, at Royal Park. He was 36. As a food producer he was not compelled to go to war, but sign up he did. He was captured by the Japanese in Malaya and died on the Burma Railway of beriberi (a common name for malnutrition) on January 12 1944.
The unknown circumstances of her son's death as a POW, dogged an anguished Mrs Millsom for years during and after the war. Her family farmed a small property on the corner of Minns Road and the South Gippsland Highway. They milked by hand, living in a little cottage that was eventually replaced by the house that is now there.
Harry was engaged to Shelia Meadows and he had built a small two-roomed corrugated iron hut on a bush block closer to Koonwarra. He had planned to clear and farm it.
Ken Caithness said he can still remember the distress and fear at the news that Harry had been taken prisoner by the Japanese in New Guinea. The last report about him was that he was firing on enemy lines from a ridge in the Rabaul region.
During the Christmas of 1944, the family received a telegram saying: "I am safe. Will be home soon, signed Harry." But the joy was short-lived. Harry Millsom had three cousins also named Harry and the telegram was from one of those cousins.
The war ended. There was no news of Harry. There was no record of him having been a prisoner of war, nothing to indicate whether he was dead or alive.
The months passed. The years passed. Nothing. His mother could not bear such a burden and withdrew into her sadness.
But one day her demeanour lightened. Mrs Millsom told her friend Olive Caithness that she had had a dream in which her son, along with hundreds of other POWs, had been loaded onto a Japanese ship. In her dream, the United States Air Force, not realising the ship's cargo, attacked the vessel and sank it. At last she felt she had found her answer. Her dear son was at rest and she could be at peace.
The money to honour those two POWs has come from rent paid by the Koonwarra Farmers' Market, held every month in the evocative surrounds of the Memorial Park.
Those two young men left the land to defend the land. Now the bounty of that land is helping to preserve a town's gratitude.
There's a continuity to that, which Harry Millsom and Bob Barguss would no doubt appreciate.
So would their mothers.
(With thanks to "The Star" for allowing reproduction of their article.)
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