The Nameless Names

Recovering the missing Anzacs
by Scott Bennett

Published by Scribe
RRP $39.99 in paperback | ISBN 9781761381089

This book has received lavish praise from noted author Ross McMullin. He writes: ‘This admirable book, superbly researched and insightfully written, illuminates the profound and enduring consequences for so many Australian families whose loved ones were among the missing in World War I.’

Author Scott Bennett describes his purpose in writing this book in succinct language: to reveal ‘… the human faces hidden behind the cold stone’ that is, the cold stone of a war memorial.

The statistics are sobering. Of the 62,000 Anzac soldiers who died in the Great War, over one-third are still listed as missing. With no marked graves, the only reminders of their sacrifice are the many names inscribed on ageing war memorials around the world.

Bennett has chosen to tell the story of such missing Anzacs through the personal experience of three sets of brothers — the Reids, Pflaums, and Allens — whose names he selected from the Memorials to the Missing. Bennett traces their paths from small, peaceful towns to three devastating yet familiar battlefields of the Great War: Gallipoli, Fromelles, and Ypres.

The Pflaums, for example, were a family identifying as Danish, who emigrated to escape Prussian aggression only to lose two of their three sons in a conflict in the old world they had left behind for freedom. And yet, perceived as German, they feared retribution in their community even as their sons were dying in the name of Britain.

The carnage of the Western Front is well known. But it is the aftermath in which families search for answers about the fate of loved ones whose bodies were never identified that intensified the grief and led many on an endless search for elusive facts.

Bennett attempts to address many painful questions.

• What circumstances resulted in the disappearance of so many soldiers?
• Why did the Australian government fail in its solemn pledge to recover the missing?
• Why were so many families left without answers about the fate of their loved ones — despite the dedicated efforts of Vera Deakin and her co-workers at the Australian Red Cross inquiry bureau, first in Cairo and then in London?

Vera, a daughter of Australia’s second prime minister, had had a privileged upbringing, and yet devoted herself tirelessly to seeking answers for the families of the missing.

This book serves as a reminder, if one was needed, of the emotional toll war inflicts upon families, who are caught between clinging to hope and letting go and finding acceptance in incomplete facts.

It is the intimate stories of the three families Bennett focuses on that illuminate the tragedy of war and the utter devastation of losing a son on a foreign battlefield so far from home.

VERDICT: A sobering reminder of the price we all pay for war.

AUTHOR: Click on this link to read the story of the Scott Bennett’s research in preparation for writing this book.