Strangely by today’s standards, not a lot of the deaths of servicemen were reported in the Family Notices section of either the Melbourne dailies or the Preston Leader.
One notable exception was Maurice “Mickey” Barry, whose sorrowful mother was still placing In Memoriam notices in The Leader some ten or twelve years after her son’s death.
Barry’s fate, like many of the 1,220 that died on the night of 19 July, 1916, was never really uncovered – his mother received a cable claiming he died as a prisoner-of-war and claimed she had received a parcel from him posted some six weeks after his supposed death.
In reality, like hundreds of others that fateful night, he was simply never seen again – on 17 February, 1917, he was officially declared as Killed In Action on 19 July, 1916 after he was reported on a German death list to have died south west of Warneton, his pay book and disc having been found. His body was never recovered and his sacrifice is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres, Belgium.
Link to the history of Maurice Vincent Barry
Link to ozsportshistory.com downloads for WW1
