Burwood | Bodo Muche

 War Memorial

Burwood Public Art | Sculpture by Bodo Muche

Bodo Muche
2015

This is the most resonating war memorial I've ever come across. It's the kind of stories we need to read more often. Burwood has done an amazing job with this sculpture. I felt both proud and sad reading Mr. Hall's story. 


Plaque:

‘The Bugler from Burwood’

The story of Leonard Francis Hall, 9 May 1897 – 24 February 1999
Leonard Francis Hall was born in Burwood on 9 May 1897 and was part of the celebrated 10th Light Horse Regiment which included some of the best riders in the world. Hall enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force in 1915 after the Major of the Light Horse Regiment heard him play the bugle and begged him to join as their regiment did not have a bugler. As Hall boarded the boat to the Great War with his bugle in hand, that he would not play again, he plucked an emu plume from his slouch hat and placed it into the hands of a girl waving in the crowd. When Hall landed at Gallipoli in the former Ottoman Empire he was the lead machine-gunner in the impossible assault
of the Battle of Nek. This was the worst battle of the Gallipoli campaign with 879 of his fellow diggers killed. After evacuating the Gallipoli peninsula, Hall fought in the Battle of Beersheba in Ottoman Syria in 1917 where he was
injured by a bomb which killed nine out of his 14-man crew and his horse, Q6. The courage he exhibited during this campaign saw him picked by Thomas Edward Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) to help the British Empire in the Capture of Damascus in 1918. Hall returned to Australia in 1919 and was met by a woman who said, “Excuse me sir, would you like your plume back?” Hall married his feather caretaker two years later and they had two children.
Leonard Francis Hall died in Perth in 24 February 1999, aged 101 years, after living a life of perseverance, strength and heroism.



📍 Burwood Park

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