Tragic tale of family’s war

While there are many moments of Australian wartime history to be proud of, there are also tragedies — both on the front and at home — and one such Geraldton story is that of the Groesslers.

Henry Groessler moved from Germany to the colony of New South Wales as a 16-year-old.

By 1892, when Henry was 31, he had been officially recognised as a naturalised Australian, with the same rights as any British-born free man.

By the 1910s, Henry had a well-respected family in Geraldton in wife Sophia and nine children.

When the call to arms came for World War I, four of Henry’s sons — William, Eugene, Frank and Henry Jr — went to war for Australia.

But after they left, the family were declared illegal aliens, despite having spent more than 20 years as naturalised Australians. Henry was stripped of his Government job as a railway plumber, and Sophia was similarly ejected from her secretarial position, which crushed the family.

Birdwood House Military Museum president Barry Stinson said the Geraldton community wasn’t happy with the ruling against the Groesslers, and questions were asked in Parliament about why Henry could not keep working.

The Geraldton Express added to that voice, writing in 1917: “It is difficult to see how a plumber, even if he were so inclined, could render assistance to the Kaiser’s hordes” and highlighting that Henry’s sons had gone to war to fight for Australia.

As if the troubles at home were not enough, the war’s toll on the Groesslers was heavy, with William dying on a hospital ship after being wounded in Gallipoli, and Eugene and Frank discharged from the army for medical reasons.

Finally in 1918, after hearing of his family’s treatment at home, then spending three days dashing between craters in no-man’s-land, falling in and out of consciousness from the concussions of bombardment, Henry Jr applied for discharge from the army, writing: “Under the circumstances and taking into consideration the injustice done to my family, I feel too bitter to continue fighting.”

Henry’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren have collected the story to ensure it lives on.

Some descendants still live in Geraldton. Kate Bovis is a granddaughter of the eldest Groessler daughter, Henrietta, and said her grandmother did not talk much about the family’s treatment in the war — though there was a picture of her brother William hanging on the wall.

“Grandma used to always tell me about how Geraldton used to be ... except when the lady from the historical society used to come and ask questions, Grandma would clam up and say, ‘Oh I don’t remember’, but once the lady had left she’d tell me all about it again,” she said.

“I wish now I’d had a typewriter or a computer back in those days and I could’ve just typed it up — all the things she said.

“I loved living with Grandma.

“She was good fun, had a good sense of humour.”

Dan Cunningham is another grandchild who now lives in Perth, and said it gave his German relatives pride to hear of their Australian cousins.

“They are so ashamed of their own history in some regards ... but through us they can clutch to our history, and we can share that together,” he said.

The Groessler’s story, among others, is part of the the Remembering Them exhibit currently on display at Birdwood House.