Returned serviceman Ernest Durham would have been amazed to find that after his death in 1949 he would become the centre of a story so bizarre I hardly know where to start. 😎
Private Durham signed up in 1916 with the newly formed 34th Battalion. It was made up of volunteers from the Mailand area in NSW. Durham was a 23 year old dairyman from Singleton. He is almost certainly among the men in the following photo, taken just before embarkation.
Source- Alchetron.com.
In the final months of the war Ernest was fighting on the Western Front. On September 29 he received gunshot wounds to his legs and neck, and was admitted to a field hospital at Rouen.
Source – National Archives of Australia.
The hospital was an enormous complex of buildings and tents at the Rouen Race Course, and received British casualties as well.
Progress letters were sent to Ernest’s mother;
As Private Durham’s condition deteriorated he was evacuated to England. His left leg was amputated at the Bath Military Hospital. After complications with the stump and many weeks in hospital he was returned to Australia.
Our story now shifts to a British soldier, Percy Bush-Cox, who enlisted with the Leicestershire Regiment when he was 19. Bush-Cox was born in the village of March, near Wimblington, in Cambridgeshire.
He is pictured below in uniform, circa 1916
In September/October 1918 Private Bush-Cox and his regiment were also fighting on the Western Front. According to one report, he was wounded in the arm and, like Ernest Durham, was admitted to the hospital at Rouen.
He was then reported as missing in action. In 1919 the Bush-Cox family were advised that Percy was presumed dead. His name was added to the war memorial in the churchyard at Wimblington.
ERNEST DURHAM – POST WAR
After the war, the disabled Ernest Durham found employment with the Repatriation Department in Sydney. He married, and became the father of two children. He died quietly in 1949 and was buried with full military honours.
Source -findagrave.com
Five years later another Ernest Durham died… in Cambridgeshire. This death occurred in tragic circumstances, and would create headlines in both Australia and England.
The death certificate states that the man died from gunshot wounds, self-inflicted while the balance of his mind was disturbed. And his name? It’s recorded as ‘Ernest Durham, otherwise Percy Bush Cox.‘
The shooting took place at the village of Sawston, about thirty miles from Wimblington. Ernest Durham, aka Percy Buch-Cox, died in his garden. He had rushed from the house in pursuit of his cleaning lady, who he shot and wounded before turning the gun on himself. How on earth had all this come to pass? And how (and why) did an English soldier assume the identity of an Aussie digger?
FOR THE SECOND PART OF THE STORY, CLICK HERE.
MY SINCERE THANKS TO DAVID EDWARDS, ARCHIVIST AT THE MARCH & DISTRICT MUSEUM, FOR HIS VALUABLE ASSISTANCE .
INFORMATION ON THE 34TH BATTALION A.I.F.
