By Callum Ludwig
Just a week after the service for George Ingram VC, the Seville community remembered another war hero, one who never came home.
Bruce Bethune died on 14 October 1943 while serving in the 24th Australian Infantry Battalion in Papua New Guinea, and a service was held at the Seville War Memorial on the same date, 80 years on, on Saturday.
Bruce Bethune’s nephews Alistair and Ian Johnson also loaned the Mont De Lancey Historic Homestead a few personal items of their uncle’s to display in the museum over the weekend.
Alistair Johnson said all the items on display were returned to the family after he died in Papua New Guinea.
“They were stored in an old suitcase at his mother’s place, we never took a lot of notice of this suitcase until in recent times, but we opened it up and realised it was a treasure trove of his personal items,” he said.
“We’ve got a lot of the letters from his commanding officer upon his death, writing to the family, as well as letters from his friends. Our mother, Bruce’s sister, was very proud of Bruce and she kept everything and now it’s proved invaluable for us to know more about Bruce’s life.”
Disappointingly, Bruce Bethune’s panel of the Seville War Memorial was one of the two shattered in a recent attack by vandals, with Alistair the one to discover the damage.
Alistair said it’s an old cliche but to remember Bruce is to also remember what war was like.
“If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’ll all have to do them again and it’s the enormous cost to the local community, not just Wandin and Seville but you look around at the small towns where whole families were nearly wiped out because all their sons went away,” he said.
“I think with my generation and the younger generation never having been through war, this reinforces that it’s not all glory, people get killed and that’s the end of it.”
Bruce Bethune was killed when he was caught in a raging river and drowned. He is buried in the Lae War Cemetery in Papua New Guinea where unfortunately his family has never been able to visit.
Alistair said there was nothing special about Bruce, he was just a young bloke from a family, like tens of thousands of others who went away to war and never came home.
“He was quite a fair writer and must have been a well-liked fellow because there was a letter from his friend who was one of his best mates in the army and there was a letter that he wrote to his cousin that when he got home he was looking forward to going to the dances so it must have been quite sociable,” he said.
“But he missed out, he never had the opportunity to marry, have kids or do anything like that and that’s the shame of it all and it’s a sobering thought.”
Bruce Bethune’s great niece Stephanie Johnson wrote a poem telling Bruce Bethune’s story.
One verse reads:
‘Where the man beside them sent by fate,
From stranger became a trusted mate.
A boy quickly became a man,
And lost the innocence he had before war began.’
