THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER THAT REVEALED RALPH JOHNSON'S FATE.

 The mysterious letter that revealed Ralph Johnson’s fate.

In 1919, Hubert Johnson of Brighton, Victoria, received a mysterious letter. The sender was Johann Fischer of Germany. 

Hubert had the letter translated into English. What he read shocked him.

Hubert and his wife, Alice, had grieved for years after losing their son, Ralph, in the Fromelles attack in July 1916. Ralph’s body was never recovered. 

Johann’s letter explained that he had found the badly wounded Ralph near Fromelles at dusk. 

While Johann bandaged him, Ralph asked if he could send news of his perilous condition to his father. Just after Ralph handed some letters to Johann he died. ‘He passed away in the Lord’s quiet and peacefully.’ 

Thereafter, Johann repeatedly tried to contact Hubert, ‘but always my letters came back.’ 

Johann’s unfulfilled pledge continually haunted him, ‘I hardly know whether I am doing right, but I want, as I promised him, to give his letters only into his parent’s hands.’ Johann finished with: ‘I beg you to write me at once … if you are the father.’

A shaken Hubert had the letter forwarded on to the Imperial War Graves Commission, with his request that Ralph’s grave be located.

After an 18-month search, the commission tracked Johann down in Amberg. Johann recalled the burial location in Beaucamps but feared that shelling might have destroyed it. 

The commission organised an exhaustive search for the grave but found nothing. 

The commission erected a memorial bearing the inscription: ‘To the memory of this Australian soldier who died as a Prisoner of War and is believed to have been buried at the time in Beaucamps Communal Cemetery German Extension, but whose grave is now lost.’

Although Hubert and Alice’s son still remained missing, they felt comforted that they now knew how and when he had died. They drew solace from his parting message to them.

In 2009, Ralph’s remains were recovered at Pheasant Wood.

His headstone epitaph reads: ‘He was lost but now he is found.’

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