Publican dedicates life to honouring the fallen

ELLEN WHINNETT IN ZONNEBEKE, BELGIUM JOHAN Vandewalle doesn’t believe in ghosts. But he knows what he saw late one night in the moonlight illuminating the war cemetery at Polygon Wood in Belgium – 30 Australian soldiers, in slouch hats and their World War I dress uniforms.

The soldiers had been dead for almost 100 years, Vandewalle knows, but there they were, appearing to him as a vision in a misty cemetery at midnight.

“Sometimes you have to be careful talking about this,’’ Vandewalle says from the front bar of his pub a kilometre down the road from the Buttes New British Cemetery, the final resting place of 2108 Commonwealth soldiers, many of whose identities are unknown.

“People think you are an idiot, but Flanders is like this. It is full of secrets.”

This Tuesday, September 26, marks the centenary of the bloody battle of Polygon Wood, a terrible clash between German and Allied forces that claimed the lives of 5700 young Australians.

The battle tore the ground apart, flattened every tree, and churned the fields into a filthy sea of mud and gore.

A century on, the peaceful farmland and streets around the town of Zonnebeke mask the whereabouts of thousands of unknown soldiers who still lie beneath the fields.

Vandewalle, 56, a farmer and publican, has dedicated his adult life to finding and identifying these lost soldiers.

“Two hundred and sixty-two soldiers I have seen, (including) the big grave at Fromelles,’’ he says, referring to the mass grave found at Pheasant Wood outside the French village of Fromelles that contained the remains of 250 Australian and British soldiers. “It’s my passion, I grew up on the battlefields.’’

The battle of Polygon Wood, 8km from the Belgium town of Ypres, ran from September 26 to October 3, 1917, and while it ultimately repelled the Germans from the forest, the casualties on both sides were horrific.

Many of those who fell were hastily buried close to the front line and, over the years, their remains have been located, often by accident, through earthmoving and construction works. When this happens, Vandewalle, an amateur archaeologist, is called in to assist.

“My last soldier was an Australian, on Anzac Day, 2013. He is still an unknown soldier,’’ he says.

Five of these soldiers – brought into the light by roadworks 1.5km down the road from Vandewalle’s pub, Café De Dreve – have had such a profound impact on him, he dreams about them.

The Zonnebeke Five were found in 2006 when workers laying a gas pipeline unearthed their final resting place under the road. The five were taken to the cemetery at Polygon Wood and reburied with full military honours. Two of them have been identified – Sergeant George Calder, from Victoria, and Private John Hunter, from Queensland.

So moved was he by the discovery of Hunter’s body, which had been buried with care, Vandewalle travelled to Australia to meet the soldier’s family and learn the history of how this young man came to be buried there decades before.

“I told the soldier, ‘I will find your footsteps’,’’ he says.

John Hunter, known as Jack, was buried facing southwest towards the sunset, carefully wrapped in a blanket and tied with wire, with his hands on his heart.

Vandewalle discovered he’d been fighting alongside his younger brother, Jim, when he was fatally wounded in the first advance on September 26.

Jim dragged him away from the line of fire and later buried him with great care and love, promising to return for him.

But he was unable to return for his brother and, surviving the war, eventually returned to Australia. He died an elderly man, calling out for his brother as he passed away.

DNA confirmed John’s identity in 2006. Vandewalle visited his relatives in Queensland and Western Australia in 2009, and paid his respects at Jim’s gravesite in Ipswich.

In 2010, Vandewalle established a charity to build the Brothers-in-Arms memorial in Zonnebeke, a statue of the Hunter brothers. It will honour mateship and courage.

On Tuesday, as well as attending the official commemorations, Vandewalle will unveil a giant mural along the wall of his establishment depicting the front line and John Hunter’s final moments.