Balmain

Balmain

Approximately 1208 members of the AIF listed Balmain as their suburb, this figure includes a handful of soldiers who returned to Australia during the war and re-enlisted. 144 Balmain soldiers are listed as having been killed in action, additionally 53 soldiers later died from wounds suffered in action, six soldiers died from disease and one solider, Ernest Hugh William Annett, died as a prisoner of war, for a total of 203 dead.

Following the War, Balmain Council was given a gun seized on the opening day of the Hundred Days Offensive that ended the war as part of the War Trophy Distribution Scheme. The Gun was put on display outside Balmain Town Hall and hundreds attended it’s unveiling. It’s not known what happened to the Gun.

Many hundreds of people assembled at the Balmain Town Hall yesterday afternoon to ‘view the ceremony of unveiling a 77-millimeter  German gun, captured from the Germans in 1918, by the 30th Battalion. It now reposes on a concrete platform in the Balmain Town Hall enclosure. In the platform is embedded a brass plate, with the Inscription: “This gun was captured from the Germans by the 30th Battalion, AIF., at Foucacourt, France, on the 27th August, 1911 unveiled by Colonel J. H. Bruche, C.B., CMG, A.D.C., 15/8/1920. R. Thornton, Mayor.”

APA citation: WAR TROPHY UNVEILED. (1920, August 16). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 10. Retrieved November 6, 2018, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15902312