By HELEN McANULTY

It was 1916 and in three years an unsuspecting world would be thrown into the chaos of the Spanish Flu pandemic.

But there was already chaos in Europe where war of horrifying proportions had been waging for two years and young Australians were volunteering in large numbers to help in a conflict on the other side of the globe.

Leonard Crockett, Alf Mead and Arnold Caldwell had been schoolmates at East Orange school and were no doubt excited by the idea of overseas travel when they left Australia on the steamship Marathon on 31st October 1916. They had just completed their training with the Fifth Division of Engineers known as Sappers, which was part of the Fifth Division of the AIF and were on their way to join Allied forces fighting in France.

Sapper Caldwell wrote letters to his parents, Mr and Mrs A.T. Caldwell of the Public School, Orange East and these were published in the Orange Leader newspaper during the final years of the war.

Arnold was a draughtsman in the Orange Lands Office and a keen observer with an ability to express his thoughts and experiences in his numerous letters. On reaching England the Engineers were first camped on the Salisbury Plains in Wiltshire. It was January and ice and snow lay on the ground when he wrote his first letter home.

“The eternal cold is a nuisance and makes it hard to get comfortable but, in my opinion, it isn’t as bad as the cold in Orange in winter!”

By May he was a few miles behind the lines in France when he wrote again.

“We have spent most of the time digging dugouts. We haven’t had any casualties yet, though I think there have been some very close calls. We are right amongst the big guns here. They get going about three in the morning and I’ve never heard anything like it. A night bombardment is like a lovely fireworks display—the flash and the bursting of shells with the red, green orange and white flares going up all the time.”

He signed off with a word of comfort for his family:

“Don’t worry about me. I reckon a man would be terribly unlucky to get hit.”

By 10th June summer had finally come to the battlefields of France and Arnold wrote again.

“We are still having beautiful weather, the trees are bright green and looking across the fields are just wavy stretches of colour—buttercups and dandelions make them look like fields of gold, with poppies, daisies, forget-me-nots and a host of other colours.

“But across them all run the long snake-like entanglements, the smashed trenches, the thousand shell holes, and here and there a little wooden cross of some soldier, Allied or German, which speaks silently and eloquently of the struggle which has passed over these selfsame fields of yellow.

“And even if one could forget these things and miss out the torn and broken villages and ruined homes, the many crossed cemeteries and the prevailing devastation, there rises always the roar and thunder of the guns and the iron throated reminder that nations are at war.”

Nearly two months later he wrote again.

“I am quite happy tonight as I have had quite a deluge of letters from Orange. The cards are beautiful and I’m glad they’re not the usual “gallant Anzac” style. The boys out here hate those things, not so much on account of modesty, but because it’s so hard to find all the glory and splendour that is supposed to be broadcast over the battle area. There is more mud than splendour and the only possibility of “glory” is going there at any moment!

“I am still dodging bullets...a few came impossibly close yesterday you hear the shell coming miles off like the wail of a lost spirit...such a delightful moaning screech...you can generally tell whether it’s coming close and, acting on your own discretion, you duck, the lower the better.

It is truly wonderful how low a man can sink in those circumstances...just a second of uncertainty and the scream falls to a sob and with a rending crash, the shell bursts.

“Then, when the pieces have stopped whirling through the air, you get up and feel if you are still alive and thank God that another one missed you...I remember the first night I ever went into the Front Line. It wasn’t quite dark and I was wading knee deep in the mud. Suddenly I stumbled and took two steps on something hard and saw a pair of heels sticking out of the mud...I have become hardened since then.”

On Friday May 3rd, 1918, Arnold’s parents received a cable telling them that their son had been gassed. Following his rehabilitation in England, he returned to France for the battles of the Hundred Days Offensive which finally broke the back of the German war effort.

On 9th October he was enthusiastic.

“I have just received a bosker parcel from the citizens of Orange, containing biscuits, coffee, cocoa, soup tablets, soap, chocolates, cigarettes, salmon and sardines.”

Finally, on 11th November 1918 he wrote to his parents from Blangy, a village in Normandy.

“About 12o’clock the Post Office put up a wire—the Armistice is signed and the whole village went mad all the afternoon...but our thoughts are with you. I guess there will be excitement there, though you won’t know the news for a few hours yet. It’s good to know at last that it is all over and there will be no new fighting.”

The last report in The Leader was on Monday, 5th May 1919.

“Sergeant Arnold Caldwell is on his way home to Australia on the Kildonian Castle. On the same ship are also Captain Bean, Australian official war correspondent and Major Banjo Paterson.”

Arnold Cassin Caldwell was the second of five children born to Arnold and Mary Caldwell. His father was headmaster of the Public School, Orange East, from 1897 until 1931.

After his return from the war he married Lila Oliver, his high school sweetheart, and continued to live in Orange with his young family until 1933. He had a distinguished career in the Public Service and died in 1972.

He was my uncle.

In August 1919 sixteen pin oak trees were planted in Newman Park by Mr A.T. Caldwell on behalf of the school in memory of the sixteen fallen students.

In March that year the Spanish Flu pandemic arrived in Orange.

Copyright: Helen McAnulty. June 2020.