06 Aug 2018
Last month, Teneisha Ross embarked on a tour of a lifetime having won a Premier's Anzac Memorial Scholarship. Teneisha, along with 19 other students, toured the Western Front visiting significant Australian battlefields and memorials. " You don't fully understand what took place during WW1 until you actually see where it happened," Teneisha explained.
As part of the scholarship, Teneisha researched the story of William Lincoln Rae, a WW1 veteran who served in France. "I had a connection with William ever since I started researching his life. I became very emotional at William's grave when I told his story to the rest of our group and laid a poppy."
William Lincoln Rae was born in Marrickville in 1894 and enlisted in the Australian Army in 1915. In 1916, he served with the 20th Battalion at the Battle of Flers where he was wounded by shrapnel in his right arm and evacuated to England for medical care. In 1918 he returned to the Western Front and was killed in action at the Battle of Amiens. He was only 24 years old. The family's great sorrow at the loss of their young son is reflected in the words on William's headstone at the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery:
ANOTHER LIFE LOST
HEARTS BROKEN FOR WHAT
Teneisha will never forget the tour of the Western Front nor the sacrifices of the everyday Australians who served there.