Nelson Wesley Eustace Barwise [1891 - 1917]

Studio portrait of 1670 Private (Pte) Nelson Wesley Barwise, 2nd Reinforcements, 23rd Battalion, of Northcote, Vic. Pte Barwise enlisted on 15 May 1915 and embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Demosthenes on 16 July 1915. He was killed in action at Albert in France on 20 March 1917. His two brothers, 34206 Dvr Albert George Barwise and 34207 Dvr Henry William Barwise, and three of his cousins also served with the AIF.

Nelson Wesley Eustace Barwise was born on 28th August 1891 in Stawell, Victoria, Australia.

His parents  - Henry Machel Barwise and Harriet Isabella Walkeden - were married at Great Western in December 1873 and went on to have eight children.

Nelson attended the Stawell State School from 1897 through to 1904 when he was 13 years of age.

View looking from street of two men standing on the footpath in front of a fence and
Stawell State School buildings. cir1885

Soon after the War broke out in 1914, Nelson signed his enlistment papers on 15 May 1915 and was allocated 23rd Battalion with service number 1670.

After eight weeks of basic training at the Broadmeadows Camp, Nelson embarked Melbourne on board the HMAT Demosthenes on 16th July 1915.   The following image shows the troops boarding the "Demosthenes" and then as it was sailing up the bay.

By October 1915 the 23rd Battalion found themselves at Lone Pine, on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The fighting here was so dangerous and exhausting that battalions were relieved every day. The 23rd manned Lone Pine, alternating with the 24th Battalion, until they left Gallipoli in December 1915.

But not before Nelson was admitted to hospital on 10th December with "frost bite". He was in hospital for 10 days where it is noted that his toes were "swollen and painful" and 'no feeling in the big toe'.

Medical Documents of Nelson Barwise

AIF papers belonging to Nelson Barwise

The battalion was next “in the line” on 10 April 1916, when it occupied forward trenches of the Armentières sector in northern France.

Nelson - or Nellie as he was known - left his unit in July 1916 to join the Australian Training Depot in Tel-El-Kebir until mid August 1916. He was then shipped to England to be part of the 6th Training Battalion until early October 1916 when he rejoined his Battalion. The 23rd Battalion at this time were in the Ypres Salient area.

The Ypres Salient is the area around Ypres in Belgium which was the scene of some of the biggest battles in World War I. In military terms, a salient is a battlefield feature that projects into enemy territory. Therefore, the salient is surrounded by the enemy on three sides, making the troops occupying the salient vulnerable..

By early November the 23rd Bn were once again in the front trenches, this time at Dernancourt. On 1st December the 23rd departed Dernancourt and entrained at Edge Hill, then detrained at Vignacourt before marching 3.5 miles to Flesselles arriving at 9.00pm.  They stayed in this area until 24th December.

January 1917 the Battalion moved constantly within this area, from Needle Trench to Front Line and back again and by the 31st January 1917 they were not far from Warlencourt and Noreuil.

In late March 1917, the German Army was withdrawing east and north – east of Bapaume back to its new fortress, the Hindenburg Line. This long stretch of trenches and barbed wire ran from Arras in a south–easterly direction towards Bullecourt, where it circled the village. Placenames such as Lagnicourt, Vaulx–Vraucourt, Morchies, Louverval, Noreuil, Boursies and Hermies, where sharp actions took place costing Australian lives, passed into Australian military history but are now largely forgotten.

But Noreuil will never be forgotten by the family of Nelson Wesley Eustace Barwise, as this was where he was killed by Machine Gun Fire on 20th March 1917.

He was killed along with five of his mates in a trench on the sunken road leading into Noreuil and was buried by a salvage party in an open field between Noreuil & Bullecourt between 15 April & 20th April. Pte Sidney Propating 4018 Witness to burial.

witness reports from the Red Cross Movement

some of the above comments read as follows:

"he was shot by Machine Gun through the heart"

"He had an effeminate way of talking & we nicknamed him Nellie"

"he was hit with a machine gun bullet and was dead when I got there"

"he was killed in the Noreuil stunt of 2 or 3 weeks before"

"we called him Nellie, dark, pleasant face, hair inclined to be curly"

"was killed by M.G. Fire on the Sunken Road leading to Noreuil"

"found & buried Barwise's body near where he fell, 300 yards this side of village"

"on or about 10th April at Lagnicourt, they found & buried six men, one of whom was N. W. Barwise. The men were lying dead about three weeks"

"I knew Barwise well, we called him Nellie. He was a bit of a ladies man"

Today, as in 1917, this is an open countryside of large fields and views stretching across gradual undulations and big, gentle ridges. A feature of the area are the so–called ‘sunken roads’ lying beneath the level of the field boundaries. This ‘sunken’ effect was due to the continual ploughing over the centuries which raised the level of the fields at the edges, making steep banks for the roads.

The Australians, the British and the Germans all used the banks for bivouacs and defences as they gave protection against enemy fire. Little niches were burrowed into the sides of the road, where a man might live out of the rain and be fairly safe from shell bursts. In this way whole companies of men could find a temporary home in burrows called by the Germans ‘rabbit holes’.

Nelson Wesley Barwise is remembered for all time at the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial as seen below:

above notices were located in the newspapers at the time.

A death notice (on the right) placed by Nelson's Fiance, no one in the family knew of her
until this notice and no one knows what happened to her.

Nelson Wesley Eustace Barwise was born on 28th August 1891 in Stawell, Victoria, Australia and died at the age of 26 years on 20th March 1917 in Noreuil, France.

May he forever rest in peace along side his mates.

LEST WE FORGET

Nelson Wesley Barwise's name will be projected onto the exterior of the Hall of Memory at the AWM in Canberra on:

• Wed 3 September, 2014 at 3:33 am
• Mon 20 October, 2014 at 11:45 pm
• Sat 13 December, 2014 at 10:44 pm
• Fri 6 February, 2015 at 10:37 pm
• Sun 29 March, 2015 at 8:33 pm
• Sun 10 May, 2015 at 10:33 pm
• Fri 19 June, 2015 at 6:39 pm
• Mon 27 July, 2015 at 1:16 am

These dates and times are estimates. The actual time of projection could change as a result of weather and other factors, so it is advisable to check closer to the date.
In the rare event of a temporary loss of electrical power, the names scheduled for display in that period will not appear until the next time listed.

<<>>

Damien Parer - an Australian Photographer

image courtesy of the Australian War Memorial

Today in Australian military history - 17/9/1944 - The academy award-winning, Australian cameraman Damien Parer was killed while filming American troops on Peleliu in the Pacific.

Parer's documentary, Front line Kokoda, won an Oscar for best documentary in 1943. Having filmed Australians in action during the early years of the war, Parer accepted a job with the American film company, Paramount, to film Americans in action in the Pacific.

Even sixty years after his death Damien Parer remains one of Australia's most well-known combat cameramen. He was born on 1 August 1912 at Malvern in Melbourne but was educated largely in Bathurst, at Saint Stanislaus School. Parer joined the school's camera club and decided early on that he wanted to be a photographer. Having left school and failing to find photographic work in Melbourne, he resumed his education before finding an apprenticeship. Also interested in motion pictures, Parer, having completed his apprenticeship, moved to Sydney to work with the director, Charles Chauvel.

When the Second World War began, Parer had become experienced in stills photography and motion picture work, and was appointed as official movie photographer to the AIF. He sailed for the Middle East in January 1940 where he filmed on board HMAS Sydney after it had sunk the Italian cruiser, Bartolomeo Colleoni. Parer was on board another ship, HMAS Ladybird when she bombarded Bardia and he advanced with the infantry at Derna, his first experience of close action. At Derna he decided that he needed to film from as close to the action as possible, sometimes even in advance of the troops. Acquaintances later recalled that from the moment Parer made this decision he was doomed to die on the battlefield.

Parer filmed in Greece and in Syria, covering the action from aircraft, the deck of a ship and on the ground with the infantry. After Syria he travelled to Tobruk in August 1941 before covering the fighting in the Western desert. By mid-1942 Parer was in New Guinea ready to cover the fighting against the Japanese. During this phase of the war, he filmed some of his most famous sequences, some at Salamaua and, most notably, those used in Kokoda front line. This documentary won its producer, Ken Hall, an Oscar for documentary film-making. Behind the footage lay Parer's deeply held desire to draw to public attention, the conditions under which the Australians were fighting in New Guinea.

In late 1942 Parer travelled to Timor to film Australians of the 2/2nd Independent Company who were fighting a guerrilla campaign on the island, the result of which was his documentary, Men of Timor. He then returned to New Guinea where he flew on a series of hair-raising Beaufighter operations against Japanese shipping in the Bismarck Sea. After that he moved to the Salamaua area where he filmed, among other actions, the well-known assault on Timbered Knoll.

In August 1943, after more than 12 months of rancour and disagreement, Parer left the Department of Information's employ to work for the United States company, Paramount News. His early assignments involved filming further air raids over New Guinea. On 23 March 1944 during a period of leave, Parer, a deeply religious man, married Marie Cotter in Sydney. Their union was a brief one. Parer returned to action, leaving the war in New Guinea behind to accompany the United States Marines. He filmed them first on Guam and then covered the Peleliu operation.

On 17 September 1944, keen to get shots of the faces of advancing soldiers, Parer was walking backwards behind a tank, filming a group of marines advancing under fire. He was killed by a burst of Japanese machine gun fire.


according to the Victorian BDM Index of 1902-1913, Damien was born as Damion Peter PARER to John Arthur PARER and Teresa CAROLIN at Malvern, Victoria, Australia in 1912.