The postcard William ‘Bill’ Tremellen sent to his aunt, uncle and cousins during World War II.
An old postcard of a soldier from World War II.
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A simple inscription on the back: “To Montgomery family, from Bill Tremellen, with best wishes.”
When Stan Montgomery found this postcard among his aunt Maureen Montgomery’s things after she died in Melbourne last year, it piqued his interest.
He had seen the man’s name before.
The back of William ‘Bill’ Tremellen’s postcard.
Sifting through his own records, he found a photo he had been sent from a war cemetery in Myanmar of the grave of a W. Tremellen who had been buried there in World War II.
Stan quickly realised they were the same person.
William Tremellen, or Bill as he was better known, had been Stan’s aunt’s cousin, and the postcard would have been sent to her parents, Stan and Sadie Montgomery, as well as their children — Bill’s cousins.
Stan did some research on the photo and found that soldiers would get postcard photos of themselves that they could then send to loved ones back home.
William ‘Bill’ Tremellen’s grave in a war cemetery in Myanmar.
The photo had been taken at Melba Studio in Melbourne before Bill had gone to war.
Since finding the postcard last year, Stan — who was born in Kyabram but now lives in Goondiwindi in Queensland — has looked into Bill’s life.
Stan’s aunt Maureen grew up in Tallygaroopna, before moving away, and Stan said Bill would have also grown up in the Tallygaroopna area.
Stan Montgomery wrote a poem about finding a postcard from World War II among his aunt’s belongings after she died.
Bill was a driver in the 2/2 Motor Ambulance Convoy during World War II, and was a prisoner of war who worked on the Thai-Burma railway.
Bill died on November 7, 1943, at the age of 28, while working on building the railway.
Stan said Bill died only days before his group was moved from the railway to the “relative safety” of Changi prison camp.
He is now buried at Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery in Myanmar.
So moved after finding the postcard, Stan wrote a poem about finding it.
Dust collected memories
The detritus of an old aunt’s time,
sepia toned image,
a fresh faced lad
smiled up at me from a card.
“To those I loved” was all it had.
“How young and brave,
for what you gave!”
Another photo taken more recently,
with the same name
on a Commonwealth grave.
Stan has written another poem about war, in the style of famous World War I poet Wilfred Owen.
Rather than having the personal connection like his other poem, this one focuses on those drawn into World War I in general.
It draws a heavy contrast between the battle-worn veterans and the new recruits heading to the front lines for the first time.
It uses strong metaphors to paint the picture of horror and waste, contrasting with the childlike eagerness to become involved, and finishes in the stark reality of the front during World War I.
Replacements
Through mud ankle deep they dragged their wake-weary bodies, along the shell-rained road toward a measured rest, for weeks not known, hunched, head down like overburdened beasts, tired and spirit-broken.
Their mates left behind, still on those blood-smeared parapets.
Crumpled and broken like cast-out furniture in an abandoned shack.
Once loved, cared for, but now buried as detritus of war.
Jovial replacements march past, like party-bound toddlers, their songs to march-tunes drowned out by a relentless rain’s chorus.
Eager they are, to taste the steel of an unrepentant and unyielding enemy.
All driven by the same unlikely want — to see another home sunrise; to test and prove worthy themselves to be called “Men of the War”.
But to those marching away, these boys, they’re already dead.
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