Bim Affleck has just returned from a wonderful trip to the Western Front and the Ypres Salient, while there he went to Fromelles, at present he is researching the names on the Christ Church (Warrnambool) Memorial Tablet for those who served in World War One for the Bishop. Three Warrnambool names on the Memorial Tablet were killed at Fromelles – Captain Clive Boyer Hopkins, and Privates Wallace Hill Hammond and Harold Arthur Esam. These three men all had different outcomes, Hopkins was buried in July 1916 in Rue-du-Bois Military Cemetery, Esam was recovered in 2008 and buried in Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Cemetery, and Hammond’s body has never been recovered. Bim laid a wreath at Arthur Esam’s grave to commemorate the three men, and also organised for Lexie Forbes to come up to Fromelles from Lille where she is doing a Rotary Exchange year. While they were in the cemetery they came across the grave of Pte Ray Holstein Pflaum who is Tony Robinson’s great uncle on his maternal side.

The Australian War Memorial Photographic Collection holds a studio portrait of 161 Pte RH Pflaum, 32nd Battalion. A shop assistant of Blumberg, South Australia, prior to enlistment, he embarked with A Company on 18 November 1915 aboard HMAT Geelong (A2) for Suez. The battalion relocated to the Western Front, France during mid-June 1916. Records from the Red Cross during the First World War suggested that Pte Pflaum had died of wounds on 24 November 1916 while a prisoner of war of the Germans. However, after further research by the Pflaum family, it was eventually discovered that he had been wounded at Fromelles on 19 July and picked up by German stretcher bearers. The Germans provided the information that he had died on 21 July 1916 and also returned Pflaum's identity disc to the family. He was aged 19 years. Initially he had no known grave but, in 2008 a burial ground containing the bodies of 250 British and Australian soldiers was located at Pheasant Wood, France. The soldiers died during the Battle of Fromelles on the night of 19-20 July 1916 and were buried by German troops. In 2010 all of the remains were reburied in the newly created Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery. At the time of the official dedication of the cemetery on 19 July 2010, ninety-six Australians had been identified through a combination of anthropological, archaeological, historical and DNA information. Since then other Australians, including Pte Pflaum, have been identified.

 

Tony Robinson takes up the story from there: “Three of the Pflaum boys (Elliott, Theo and Ray) went to the First World War from Birdwood, then called Blumberg (the name was changed in honour of General Birdwood). Theo wrote of finding an injured Ray in a dugout, as he was moving into position during the Battle of Fromelles on 19 July 1916. He wrote further that he gave Ray a mouthful of whisky before leaving to find a position for his gun. Ray died of his wounds later that night. Theo himself was killed eighteen months later in Belgium, and buried at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Flanders, Belgium. My great uncle Elliot (Tab) flew with the Australian Flying Corp (SE5’s) directly opposite the Richtofen Circus, he had three confirmed kills flying with Captain AH Cobby, the leading Australian ace of the war, and a great friend of Tabs.”

2nd Lt Theodor Milton Pflaum was born on 20 September 1895 in Blumberg (now Birdwood), South Australia, to parents Heinrich Adam Theodor and Mary Jane Pflaum (nee Theel). Theodor worked as a clerk, and he spent a number of years with the 79th Infantry Battalion cadets before the outbreak of the First World War. Along with his brother Ray Pflaum, Theo enlisted in the AIF, at Keswick, South Australia, on 21 July 1915. Their older brother, Elliot Frederick Pflaum, enlisted about a month later on 24 August 1915 and was assigned to the 9th Light Horse. Theo and Ray Pflaum were assigned to the 32nd Battalion and embarked aboard HMT Geelong on 18 November 1915. Shortly after arriving in Egypt for training, Theodor was transferred to the 8th Machine Gun Company. Theo was commissioned as a second lieutenant in early 1917 and transferred to the 25th Machine Gun Battalion. He spent some months training in England, before rejoining his unit in France in early September 1917. On 24 September 1917, 2nd Lt Theodor Pflaum, along with four other officers, was sent with fifty men to establish machine gun positions. Whilst supervising the sending of forward material to advanced positions he was shot in the thigh, resulting in a compound fracture. Theodor Milton Pflaum died of wounds upon arrival at the 10th Casualty Clearing Station on 24 September 1917. He is buried in the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Flanders, Belgium. His brother, Elliot Pflaum, survived the war and returned to Australia in 1919.