As a 23-year-old Charles Walter McCrone joined thousands of other young men and marched off to a war full of violence and brutality, far removed from the peaceful farming communities of Temora and Junee. Known as Walter to family and friends he was the son of George and Evelyn McCrone and was the oldest of seven siblings. Even before heading to the battlefields of Europe his life was marred with tragedy with the family losing their parents at a young age meaning the young family became fragmented. Walter was the winner of the Toose Cup, which was a well-known cycling race held in Temora. His achievement is celebrated with the cup and a photograph of him with the trophy on display at the Temora Rural Museum. After enlisting at Victoria Barracks in Sydney and following basic training he departed Australia on the troop transport ship HMAT Euripides A14 with a stop over in Melbourne to pick up more troops. Capable of transporting 136 officers, 2204 other ranks and 20 horses the ship was used extensively throughout the World War I transporting troops to Gallipoli, Egypt and the Western Front. Another local Hugh Sinclair of Temora shared the voyage with Walter. He was sent to the battlefields of Belgium and France where the trench warfare was the very definition of hardship, danger and sacrifice. During his service he was wounded twice and hospitalised four times, with the toll taken not only physical but mental as well with one hospital admission for shell shock. He returned to service after each of his hospital visits and was eventually promoted to Lance Corporal on 5 June 1917. Walter was not to return home, sustaining wounds in Belgium that ultimately claimed his life. He died on 7 October 1917. A month later he was buried at the Godewaersveld cemetery in France. It was to be more than 100 years before he was visited by anyone from the districts he grew up in when Craig and Edwina Sinclair visited his grave in 2024. Walter McCrone was not just another statistic of distant war, he was a son, a brother and a young man with an unrealized future.
