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| Anna Durie |
On 29 December 1917 Canadian Captain William Arthur Durie (1881–1917) was killed near Lens and buried in Corkscrew Cemetery, France. He came from an old military family. His late father had been first colonel of the Queen's Own Rifles, and his mother was—as her actions would later prove—a "take-no-nonsense" soldier's wife.
His distraught mother, Anna, wrote to the Commission questioning whether the grave really contained her son’s body, and if so, she vowed to return him to Canada.
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| Capt. Durie and His Father (Insert) |
“I WAS GOING LIKE A CRIMINAL, BY NIGHT, TO EXHUME THE BODY OF ONE OF THE BRAVEST OFFICERS THAT EVER LEFT CANADA!”
True to her word, in 1921 she attempted but failed to remove William’s coffin. Having declared her intention to shoot anyone who tried to move William’s grave, in March 1925 Anna was furious to learn he had been re-interred at the larger Loos British Cemetery.
Wracked with “grief and pain,” she accused the Commission of lying to her, arguing she had been assured Corkscrew Cemetery would not be closed and now her son’s body might be lost.
The next thing anyone knew about the fate of Anna’s son was an article in the Toronto Daily Star in August 1925 describing his “reverent” funeral service at St. James’ Cemetery, Toronto, Canada. The article proclaimed that “after eight years of effort” she had “succeeded in obtaining custody of his remains”.
What “obtaining custody” really meant was stealing into the cemetery under the cover of darkness on 25 July, opening William’s coffin, retrieving most of his remains, packing them up in a case and clandestinely sailing with them to Canada. On hearing of the funeral thousands of miles away, the Commission conducted an investigation and made a grim discovery.
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| News Account of the Burial in Canada |
In one last show of rebellion, Anna Durie never acknowledged her successful actions to the Commission. In 1928 she even filled out a form to request a personal inscription for the headstone mistakenly planned for her son’s grave at Loos, knowing he was no longer there. The epitaph she wrote could even be intended as a commentary on her own actions:
“HE TOOK THE ONLY WAY / AND FOLLOWED IT / UNTO THE GLORIOUS END”.
Source: Commonwealth War Graves Website
I have nothing but great admiration for this woman. She refused to take NO for an answer. She was up against a powerfful group of men, as always, in regard to war! She won!
ReplyDeleteMargaret Sydney Australia
My historical crime thriller The Ghosts of Passchendaele was inspired, in part, by Anna Durie's courage and fortitude in taking on the British government. It does also explain the reason why Mrs Durie was refused and the deep commitment the Imperial Was Graves Commission had at the time to treat every dead soldier equally. It's available on Amazon. Just search for Frederick Petford to find it, and two sequels, all of which deal with the impact of the Great War on a remote village in Oxfordshire, England. Thanks, Fred Petford.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a story-poem on this great woman-mother. On www.poetbay.com. https://www.poetbay.com/kendwilliams
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