TO mark Anzac Day this year the Yeoval war memorial has been updated and will be unveiled today on the 100th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli.
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The names of additional soldiers have been added to the role and descendants of the men will travel from as far afield as Dorrigo to attend the ceremony.
According to Peter Tremain, from Yeoval, recent research uncovered old newspaper articles that showed the original Yeoval World War I honour board was unveiled on October 9, 1918, before the end of the war, and it contained 21 names.
“The reports of the time indicated that an additional four names were to be included on the honour roll but this never happened,” Mr Tremain said.
Mr Tremain said 100 years after World War I the situation with the missing names had been rectified with the assistance of funds from the state government’s community war memorials grant program.
Mr Tremain said a public meeting was called by the Yeoval Memorial Hall Management Committee to discuss the criteria for inclusion of the additional names and it was agreed the following names should be included.
Those previously omitted were William Joseph Bird (killed in action), Kennedy Chalmers Baird MacCulloch, Joseph Walsh (wounded), Ernest Harold Witt (wounded), Arthur Lionel Kearney (killed in action), Earlon James Corner (wounded), Daniel Peter Arrow (killed in action) and Mervyn Reginald McGuire (wounded).
Among the new names added is that of “Billy” Bird who was a well loved and respected member of the Yeoval and Cumnock communities who managed the first moving picture show at Yeoval.
“His name was inexplicably omitted from both the Cumnock and Yeoval honour rolls,” Mr Tremain said.
He was killed during the Battle of Menin Road near Passchendaele in Belgium on September 20, 1917.
Kennedy MacCulloch was the youngest of five brothers from the Yeoval district to enlist.
Arthur Kearney won the Military Medal for dispersing a German patrol near Gueudecourt, France in November 1916, but later died of wounds received during fighting at Dernancourt in France about April 25, 1918.
Daniel Arrow (who was born in Yeoval, but his family eventually settled in Brocklehurst) was killed in fighting at Ville-sur-Ancre, France in May 1918 just as the tide of the war turned in favour of the allied nations.
