Their lives and hopes are consigned to a brief footnote in history that simply reads: ‘Mundie; Gilbert; Peach; Robinson; and two unidentified soldiers.’

Lives consigned to the footnotes of history.

This photograph, which was snapped on 19 September 1917, has always intrigued me. 

To the casual observer, it features some soldiers sitting quietly in a trench, savouring a simple meal.  

What is less apparent is that these soldiers are located on Westhoek Ridge,  and are mere hours away from attacking Menin Road, in the infamous Battle of Passchendaele. 

We can only imagine the foreboding that gripped them, and how they passed those last hours? Did they sit quietly while writing a few letters home; or did they nervously smoke their cigarettes to the stub while uttering a few prayers?

And this photograph only exists through sheer happenstance. In the early evening Australia’s official war historian Charles Bean had been traversing the trenches when he came across these soldiers sharing a meal. 

Yet Bean’s diary does not mention them. Rather he expresses deep anxiety for all the attacking troops, realising they must pass through ‘a marsh of huge water filled with shell holes’ to reach their objective. 

It’s official war photographer Francis Hurley, who accompanied Bean, who provides us a glimpse into these men. He wrote briefly in his diary: ‘I secured several pictures of our forces camped in small dugouts excavated in the surrounding ramparts.’ 

History tells us that the ANZACs suffered over 5,000 casualties in the Battle of Menin Road. 

The fate of these two men is unknown. 

Their lives and hopes are consigned to a brief footnote in history that simply reads: ‘Mundie; Gilbert; Peach; Robinson; and two unidentified soldiers.’