Shepparton’s Walter O’Dea was remembered at this year’s Anzac Day commemorative service, almost 80 years after he was killed.
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Guest speaker at the 11am service, Miriam McIntosh, spoke of her uncle, who grew up in Shepparton and had been a school captain, a keen amateur athlete and an assessor with the Australian Taxation Office.
He, like many young Australian men, was killed in World War II during an airborne bombing raid on Frankfurt in Germany.
On secondment to the Royal Air Force United Kingdom from the Royal Australian Air Force, the 20-year-old flight sergeant rear gunner was part of a seven-man crew whose plane was shot down.
Six men died, with only the pilot, Warrant Officer Roger Davis, surviving.
Speaking at the Anzac Day service, Ms McIntosh read aloud a letter written to her grandmother by the pilot after the death of the flight sergeant, Mr O’Dea, who was his close friend.
It was a poignant letter that surely brought a tear to the eyes of many gathered in Shepparton on Anzac Day.
It told of how their Lancaster bomber had successfully evaded five attacks by enemy planes before finally succumbing to a sixth attack and being shot down.
“I believe and hope that the end came quickly and sudden, that they never knew what happened, nor suffered any pain,” the letter read.
“That is the way every airman wishes to go, when the time comes. Quickly and cleanly in a flash and a puff of smoke.”
“With the skies they so loved to fly in as their eternal resting place.”
Mr O’Dea was among those remembered at the Shepparton Anzac Day service, with Shepparton RSL sub-branch president Bob Wilkie urging those who attended to remember all who had fought for Australia, especially those who died.
“Anzac Day goes beyond Gallipoli. It is a day we remember all those who have served in wars past and present,” Mr Wilkie said.
“We meet, not to glorify war or celebrate victors, but to remember those who served.”
Some of those veterans marched in the parade to the commemoration service, led out by the sounds of pipes and drums.
Then they stood in a crowd of more than 500 people and paid their respects to those mates they fought alongside, and all those who came before and after them, in all theatres of war and peacekeeping.
As Juliana de Quilettes sang the song Beautiful soldier by Marion Burns, it would have proved difficult for anyone not to think of all those who had fought for Australia.
“And they who were you shall not grow old, though in the graves they lie their stories told,” she sang.
“And when the sun goes down and rises up again, we will remember them, we will remember them.
“Beautiful soldier.”
Senior Journalist