The Fromelles Missing: the tragic Pflaum family story




The Fromelles Missing: the tragic Pflaum family story

For Theodor Pflaum (bottom centre), who fled from old Europe in 1869, Australia proved to be a land of limitless opportunities.

Yet that changed at the war’s outbreak in 1914 when Theodor was forced to register as an alien at the local police station. Only after his sons Tab (left) Theo (right) and Ray (centre) enlisted in July 1915, did suspicions about the family’s German origins subside. 

Only a year later, Theo found himself sprinting across marshy paddocks in the ill-fated Fromelles feint on the Western Front near the Somme. 

Somewhere in the murk, Theo noticed a wounded man lying alongside a dugout. 

It was his younger brother Ray.  
‘I ran down to him and was told he had got a piece of shrapnel in the stomach.’ Theo dragged Ray into the dugout to protect him from the bombardment. 

Theo leant over Ray and reassured him that he was safe. Ray seemed comfortable; however, every time Theo tried to move him, he was wracked with pain. Theo sensed that Ray’s wound was more serious than he first thought. 

Theo, who still hadn’t fulfilled his orders, asked another soldier ‘to do his best for Ray.’

The Fromelles feint failed miserably. 

When back in the support lines, Theo discovered that Ray was missing. He later wrote: ‘World to God I could do something for Ray but still no news of him.’ 

After months without news, the Pflaum family regrettably concluded that Ray was dead.

And a year later, Theo was killed at Polygon Wood. 

Theodor maintained a respectful silence about his family’s ill-treatment until after the war. Only then, did he lament that the British Empire had missed the opportunity to demonstrate that it provided displaced pioneers with the liberty denied them in the country of their birth.

Ray’s remains were recovered and identified in 2010.
  
Extract from: ‘The Nameless Names: recovering the missing ANZACs’

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Photo credit: Geoffrey Baker


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