A hero twice over
On May 14, 1906, Harry Share was a fresh-faced young man of 17 working at Thistlebrook, the Lewis farm at Moyhu.
That morning, he was washing mud from a buggy.
Around him, seven-year-old Doris Lewis played.
Suddenly, with a shriek, the child overbalanced and disappeared over the edge of a well where Harry had drawn his water. Harry rushed to the well. Dorothy was crying in water 25 metres below.
His yells brought the only other people on the farm that day, Doris’ mother and Doris’ aunt.
Harry volunteered to descend into the well to rescue the girl if the women lowered him down using the windlass.
He reached over the well edge the and grabbed the bucket.
Carefully, as the two women took the weight on the windlass, Harry lowered a foot into the bucket and grabbed its rope.
The two women began to lower him into the well.
Suddenly, Mrs Lewis’ grip slipped.
The windlass handle from the women’s hands. Harry plunged into the well. The women rushed to look over the well’s edge.
Harry called out that both Doris and he were safe.
When Harry gave the signal, the two women wound the windlass to bring Doris and Harry to the top.
Harry was hanging on the chain between the rope and the bucket. Doris clung tightly to his leg. Her clothing had kept her afloat in nine-metre-deep water.
On July 22, 1907, Harry was presented with a certificate of merit for courage due to his ripped actions, from the Royal Humane Society by Victoria’s Lieutenant Governor in Melbourne Town Hall.
Harry played football for Molyullah.
He joined the Victorian Railways in 1914 as a fireman, feeding coal to steam locomotives that then ran on the railways.
On February 28, 1916, Harry, then 28, volunteered for the army.
His enlistment coincided with a recruitment surge as Australians realised that recruits would visit the home country, Britain.
Harry was posted to 37th Battalion. By June, he was bound for Britain.
After training on windswept Salisbury Plain, Harry joined his Battalion on New Year’s Eve 1916.
The Battalion was in the Armentie` res sector.
It was considered a ‘‘quiet’’ area where newly arrived troops could gain experience of trench warfare.
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While in the lines, Harry endured the coldest European winter in a century.
On June 7, 1917, the Battalion attacked up Messines Ridge.
Harry’s company was in the first wave of attacking troops.
By mid afternoon, against determined resistance, his Battalion captured the German trenches that had been their objective.
Other battalions of Australian troops leap-frogged them to capture further objectives.
It was then that Harry was hit by red-hot shrapnel from a German artillery shell.
It fractured his skull smashed his left thigh.
Within two days, he was in a military hospital in Rouen, but it was futile. Harry Share died on June 9, 1917.
Doris married John Gibb in 1923. She died in Wangaratta in 1977. and