HONOUR FOR LOST RELATIVE
IT WAS 102 years ago that a young Townsville man had his life cut short on his way to the Western Front in France.
Peter Macdonald was a 24year- old linotype operator at the Townsville Bulletin when he answered the call to serve and enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force.
He never made it to the trenches, dying in Egypt in 1916 as a result of septicaemia ( blood poisoning).
His descendant, Charters Towers man Malcolm Macdonald, said Peter was well liked by his colleagues at the time.
“My grandfather Jack also joined the staff at the Bulletin years later, and when it was found out the two were brothers he was told that he had to fill the big shoes of Peter,’’ he said.
Peter’s career started when he was a teenager and, after a five- year apprenticeship, he went on to work at the paper for 11 years.
Malcolm said he started to research his ancestor because of a lack of available records.
“There’s not a great deal on him, it was something that they didn’t talk about back then, so I had to do some research after he died,” he said.
“All that information went when that generation passed away … he was a very popular young guy, and he didn’t have a family or wife yet.”
An article published in the Bulletin in October 1916 details his final correspondence with his family.
The report says Peter’s father had sent a message to Egypt inquiring about his son’s health.
“Bad, but improving,” Peter said.
He died before being able to complete the message for his father and said he had hoped to get better soon.
There were four brothers in the MacDonald family, two of whom died during the wartime.
One of Peter’s brothers died years later in a Japanese prisoner camp.
Malcolm said he had asked his grandad Jack about his brother but “it hurt to talk about him”.
“It something that’s a common thing of that era, it was very much the English stiff upper lip. Don’t mention anything that is shocking to shield everyone else from the horrors of war,” he said.
He said it was up to families to preserve the history.