Love story amid hurt and sorrow
Robert George Maclean never spoke about his experiences in World War I, but he had plenty of stories to tell.
Most of them were tales of pain and tragedy, burdens he chose not to share, but amid the suffering there was a love story.
Born in Victoria, Maclean moved to WA at age 24 and worked on the mines in Kalgoorlie for 14 years before joining the war.
He left Fremantle with the 16th Battalion 10th reinforcements on October 13, 1915, at age 40.
Maclean's first battle was at Pozieres on the Western Front, where he fought with the 48th Battalion, a mix of Gallipoli veterans and fresh faces from WA and South Australia.
The battalion was bombarded from August 5 to 7, 1916, a period described as the heaviest artillery barrage Australian soldiers had faced.
They sustained hundreds of casualties in those three days and Maclean was one.
He was sent to England for treatment to a serious leg wound, re-entering the fray six months later in February, 1917.
Tragedy struck in the trenches at Pozieres when he asked a mate for a favour, only to see him blown to pieces by a shell.
Things got even worse for Maclean on May 11 when he was the victim of a freak training accident at Henencourt Wood camp.
The nose cap came off a shell fired by Australian mortar battery soldiers and crashed through Maclean's tent, striking him in the head.
He was again shipped to England with a serious wound, but this time he would not return to the front line.
During his stay at Birmingham Hospital, Maclean met a Scottish nurse named Catherine Lees Dutch, who followed him to WA after the war.
They moved to Roleystone as part of the soldier settlement scheme, where they became prominent members of the community and eventually had a street named after them.
As his mental state deteriorated in his final few years, Maclean returned to Kalgoorlie because he wanted to go back to working on the mines.
He died in Perth at age 60, leaving behind three sons, a daughter and a wife who remained a widow until her death 52 years later.
His granddaughter Lyn Sainsbury, 71, said she was researching his WWI service because his family knew so little.
"If someone said, 'How did you get your wounds,' he would say, 'Oh, I got them overseas in the war,' and that would be it," she said.
"The head wound gave him constant migraines and he walked with a stick because of the pain in his leg.
"He went away a very fit, strong man and came back a very sick man.
"He never talked about his friend who died in front of him. I read about that in a book about the 48th Battalion.
"He just lived with it all for the rest of his life."
