PRIVATE THOMAS JOSEPH DAWES
5TH BTTN AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
1ST JULY 1916 AGE 19
BURIED: BERKS CEMETERY EXTENSION, BELGIUM
Thomas Dawes mother both chose his inscription and filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia. On the latter, in the section which asks whether there's any other biographical information likely to be of interest to historians of the AIF, Mrs Dawes tells how her son was very ill on the journey out from Australia and, believing himself to be dying, wrote a letter to his mother, put it in a bottle and threw it overboard. Four months later the bottle came ashore on the west coast of Australia and the letter was posted on to his mother in Victoria.
Eleven days after her son's death, Mrs Dawes inserted a death anouncement in her local paper, the Bendigo Advertiser; it concludes with a long memorial verse which reveals her pain.
When the flags are o'er the roadways
And the troops come marching home,
And the sweethearts lean to bless them
And the mothers to caress them.
O God, have pity for the waiting ones
Whose boys can never come.