Almanac Life: The Deaths of Walter Edward and Walter Leslie Peake on The Western Front, 1917

 

My name is Wayne Peake. My family is from Peakhurst, near Hurstville in Sydney — which was named after my ancestor, John Robert Peake, who bought land there in 1838.

 

Every Anzac Day and Armistice Day, my father would retell the story of how his uncle Walter Edward Peake, known as Wally, was killed by a stray German shell on the Western Front, several hours after the Armistice came into effect at 11 am on 11 November 1918. Wally and his mates, the story went, were gathering to move to the rear, when the shell landed among them and blew them all to eternity. Tears welled in Dad’s eyes as he reflected on the story’s poignancy and the sheer rotten luck of it all. It reminded me of how the explorers Burke and Wills had missed their relief team at Cooper’s Creek by a matter of hours, and consequently perished.

 

It was only in recent years, when Australian Imperial Force service histories and Red Cross enquiries about the war dead went on the internet, and well after my father’s own death, that I learnt that this family history, which my brothers and I had already passed on to later generations, was really a myth. But like most myths, there proved to be something to it.

 

Wally had not died on the first Armistice Day, but more than a year earlier, on 20 September 1917. But he had indeed been killed by a German shell. He had been among a party of stretcher-bearers retrieving the wounded, when a shell landed amongst them. However, he had not been blown in an instant into the next world, but rather succumbed to his wounds some time later; at least, that was one version of his death.

 

Twenty September 1917, while not Armistice Day, is a significant date in the history of the first AIF’s western front campaigns. It was the first day of the battle of the Menin Road on the Passchendaele sector of the front. It is also known as ‘The Third Battle of Ypres’. Here, British General Douglas Haig launched a disastrous water-logged attack on German pill-boxes. Passchendaele joined the earlier battles of Fromelles, Pozières, and Bullecourt as those most costly in terms of Australians killed and wounded.

 

 

 

Wally Peake took his preliminary medical examination on 6 March 1916 at Hurstville. He described himself as a labourer, though his father and older brother at censuses styled themselves more romantically as ‘bushmen’. He enlisted formally at the Moore Park Showgrounds on 20 March, whence he was assigned to the 2nd Battalion depot camp at Cootamundra.

 

Wally remained there until 17 April 1916, when he was transferred to the 19th Battalion’s Holdsworthy camp. In another quirk of timing, he thus missed, by two months, the infamous Liverpool February Riots. This ‘strike’, or mutiny, sparked by poor camp conditions ended with a drunken spree in central Sydney and the killing by military police of one rioting soldier. This riot led to six o’clock hotel closures, which remained in force until the 1950s.

 

On 9 September, 1916, at Sydney Harbour, Wally left for England. Gallipoli had been evacuated nine months earlier and the Australians were now fighting on the Western Front in France and Belgium. He reached England on 27 October. On route he had the first of the illnesses that punctuated his service record. Meanwhile, in France, the AIF was on relief behind the main lines, recovering from the losses and exhaustion it had suffered during the battle for Pozières.

 

On 13 December 1916, Wally sailed from Folkestone and was ‘taken on strength’ by the 19th Battalion five days later. On 15 February, 2017, he again reported sick and was hospitalised, and was ultimately sent back to England. He left Folkstone for the continent on 4 June and rejoined his unit on 24 June. This is the last entry on his service record before ‘killed in action’ was stamped against the date, 20 September, 1917.

 

After the war, the Australian Red Cross sought to contact men who had fought with the fallen, seeking details of their deaths.

 

For Wally, the feedback was contradictory. All agreed he died on 20 September 2017, but one wrote it was in the morning, another that it was at sunset. The location was given as Westhoek Ridge, twice, and once as Zonnebeke. Most testified he had died of his wounds en route to a dressing station, but one wrote he had been hit by a second shell – which killed him instantly. Perhaps he was wounded at Westhoek and killed at Zonnebeke.

 

Wally Peake’s uncle, Walter Leslie Peake, the brother of his father, George, was also fighting with the AIF on the Western Front, near Passchendaele. It is not known if they were aware of this, though likely.

 

Growing up, I heard much less about Walter Leslie Peake— who was called Watty or Watt by his AIF mates  — than his nephew. But the sight of his name —Peake, WL— etched on the Hurstville War Memorial, which we visited often, among the fallen, just below Wally’s, affected me even more because it exactly matched the abbreviated form of my own name. It was a bit freaky for a young boy.

 

 

 

In fact, Watty had enlisted before his nephew, in February 1916. He was a bachelor who had moved from Peakhurst to the Dorrigo region in 1906, and set up a beautiful farm high in the ranges with views almost to the ocean. He left this paradise at the advanced age of thirty-five to return to Peakhurst and sign up. I think I would have stuck with farming — the Australians were of course all volunteers.

 

Just a fortnight after Wally’s death, on 4 October at 8 am, Watt Peake strayed into the direct fire of a German machine gun and was instantly killed.

 

No doubt the Peake family back at Peakhurst had been praying for their boys to return safely. The news of the death of the younger man, presumably received first, was no doubt devastating, but the loss of the second family member so soon after must have been almost too much. Perhaps they hoped, ironically as it turned out, that there had been a mistake and that Wally’s death was being reported a second time, under Watt’s name.

 

Further alarming news soon followed. Watt’s first cousin, Lance Corporal George Herbert Peake, had been ‘dangerously wounded’ on the same day Watt lost his life. George was the son of Hurstville councillor Jacob Peake, the brother of Isaac. George was repatriated, but died of his wounds in 1927.

 

Given they shared the surname ‘Peake’ and very similar Christian names, were both natives of an obscure location called Peakhurst somewhere near Sydney, and died within a few weeks of one another a few miles apart, it is not entirely surprising that the AIF bureaucracy got Wally and Watt mixed up after the war.

 

Some of the post-mortem documentation for Wally, which is now deposited at the National Archives, was originally annotated ‘WL Peake’ and bore Watty’s regimental number (5772). In 1920 George Peake was advised by the military that three photographs of his son Wally’s second gravesite at Birrs Cross Cemetery had been mistakenly sent to the father of Watty Peake — that is, George Peake’s own father, Isaac. The letter advised George that the original recipient had been asked to pass them on to him, as it was noted they shared an address: ‘Forest Road Peakhurst’. As indeed they did. George lived at ‘Braeside’, 710 Forest Road, Isaac around the corner at St Elmo. You’d assume he’d already been informed by Isaac.

 

The final resting place of Watt Peake remains unknown.

 

There is a further twist in this tale of the Peake family of Peakhurst and World War 1. Wally Peake had another cousin, Frank Kemp, fighting not far away on the Western Front. Frank’s mother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Isaac Peake. She had also moved to Dorrigo.

 

Frank was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery and promoted to sergeant. But he also went AWOL in England for an extended period. Sounds like he was a true Peake. He went back to the front and was killed a few days before the Armistice.

 

It’s almost certain someone in the family conflated the fates of Wally Peake and Frank Kemp and thus created the myth I discussed earlier — that Wally was killed by a shell on Armistice Day. It is certainly one hell of a tale, even if apocryphal.

 

The Peakes’ is just one of many  stories of family tragedy associated with the Great War, albeit more unusual than most. Some mothers lost three or four sons. Australia’s military deaths exceeded 60,000; about one of every six who volunteered. It was a terrible price to pay, given that there was no valid reason that Britain, let alone Australia, should have been at war with their German cousins.

 

 

To read more by Wayne Peake click here.

 

 

 

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Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

 

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