Re: Opinion concerning a photi
He is the long lost 3rd brother that nobody talks about.
Sadly it was Roy who became the long-lost brother.
He left home as a teenager and moved in with a family named McDermott and started using their surname. his older half-sister Gertie had married one of the McDermott boys. There is little doubt that Roy left home because of his very abusive father.
Roy enlisted in the army as Roy McDermott and was one of ths soldiers who landed at Gallipoli on the first day. Our family is very proud to have an original Anzac in the family.
Roy asked for his half of his pay to go to his widowed mother.
In May, Roy was badly injured while advancing on the enemy. He was sent to a hospital in Greece and later to England. Records show that as a result of his injury Roy's left leg was 1 1/2 inches shorter than his right leg.
He arrived back in his home town in January 1916. The township wanted to put on a dinner in his honour but he and his family declined because his brother, Leslie, had drowned on New Years Day and the family was grieving.
The army determined that his earning capacity had diminished by 30 shilling a fortnight as a result of his injury and awarded him a pension of that amount. He once asked again for half of that money to be sent to his mother and his younger brothers (twins - Claude and Clyde).
We know that he worked light duties at a mine but fell 105 ft down a bank and was serious injured and was in hospital for a while. However the army determined that these injuries didn't lessen his capacity to work any further.
Roy later went to Queensland looking for work and later went to Victoria. In his llast contact with his mother he informed her in was in Bendigo.
In about June 1919, the army contacted his mother asking his whereabouts. His younger brothers would be turning 16 in August and Roy would no longer be able to claim them as dependants and the money beinbg sent to his mother would be halved. The army needed to know Roy's address and whether he was working or not. His mother said it had been almost a year since she heard from him and pleaded to be allowed to keep Claude's payment as he was an invalid (in 1916 he had had one lung removed because of hydatis cysts).
The army asked his mother why Roy had a different surname from her as she stated she had only been married once. Had Roy enlisted using an alias. His mother answered that McDermott was his 'boxing name'.
The army contacted various state Army HQ asking them to inform Hobart HQ if they had any contact from Roy. I imagine that Roy was no longer collecting his Army pay.
For more than 90 years no trace of Roy was found. His mother and siblings all went to their graves not knowing for show of his fate. My grandmother believed that he must have died in the Great Flu epidemic.
Then a few years ago I found a listing for a Roy McDermott dying in Ballarat in Feb 1919. Parents unknown, aged 25 (our Roy would have been 26). I checked all databases for all states for a birth of a Roy McDermott in the years this man would have been born. Didn't find a single one. I also checked shipping arrival in Australia.
My sister managed to locate the burial records and he was listed as a soldier. There is only one Roy McDermott listed in army records between 1915 and 1919 and that is our Roy.
We hope that we will be allowed to put up a headstone on his grave and that the army will place a plaque stating he was an original Anzac.
The Flu Epidemic hit Victoria in December 1918 and its main victims were young adult males so it looks like my grandmother was right about how her brother died.
