Julie Reece Tours

Education and emotions on Connecting Spirits tours ... 

By Francesca Atkinson 

Deputy Principal of Meningie Area School Mal Jurgs, has been involved with Connecting Spirits since its inception in 2006, going from traveling to Europe to learn more about the history of World War I (WWI) to working with Julie Recce on the tours. Mal uses each tour to expand his own knowledge, while strengthening his comprehension and researching the exact locations of a specific battle or soldier.

Meningie Area School  is situated on the Coorong in South Australia and until 2017 he was not sure how transitioning from school-based tours to community-based would affect the tours’ credibility. Being community-based from 2017 on, the tours now include people from different regions of South Australia and is not exclusive to schools. However it is still possible for school students to take part depending on their age and by meeting other conditions, and the project continues to have the same intentions of commemorating those who fought in France and Belgium in WWI as in the original CS tours.

“I wasn’t apprehensive coming into the community tour, but I was sort of thinking, how will this go? I guess I had questions because it was different to school-based tour,” Mal said. “There was part of me going, is this going to be my last one as Connecting Spirits tour, but I found it really rewarding, particularly the connection with Frank Lampard. I guess it went back to our project's roots, in terms of the Ngarrindjeri story and it made this connection add another dimension to the story I’ve been living for the last 13 or so years.”

Tour manager Julie Reece undertakes similar itineraries as previous years with a focus on smaller groups thus giving tour members a more personalised journey. On the most recent 2019 tour, Mal and Julie shared the guiding throughout the whole tour. Having toured together many times, this came easily to them as they shared their knowledge of  particular battles or soldiers. In addition, other group members also contributed to the narrative with their own research on their soldiers’ stories.

Mal commemorates an array of soldiers on each tour, some ancestors of his own and some Australian soldiers on behalf of friends or past Connecting Spirits members. For him though, it is most important to understand the journey these soldiers, took from before they left to fight in the war, to when they paid the ultimate sacrifice and lost their lives.

Since his first tour, Mal has commemorated his Uncle Frank, who now remains a major part of the Connecting Spirits journey. Through researching the life of Private Frank Howard Bartley, of the 32^nd Battalion, he became intrigued and began investigating his family history further.

“Just to put some context in, when I grew up, I had a lot more to do with my mother’s side of the family than my dad’s because my dad was born in Queensland. I had an understanding of Uncle Frank and his involvement in the war, but just a surface understanding, not a deep understanding. Once we started doing this project, I actually found a lot of what I had been told, wasn’t necessarily true.”

The town of Meningie is a close community and being the Deputy Principal of the local area school, he has been able to share Connecting Spirits with many locals, along with his own wife, son and daughter. Leading up to the first tour in 2006, Mal completed the research of his Uncle Frank with his son who then in turn commemorated him at Villers-Bretonneux, at the memorial where Private Bartley is named, as he has no known grave.

However the next day when visiting Bellicourt Cemetery in France, Mal and his son made the decision to adopt an unknown grave as the one where they would commemorate their Uncle Frank, which has become a popular tradition for families of soldiers who are only Known Unto God. Private Bartley’s last known location was around the Bellicourt region and Mal is able to reflect on the idea of this being the last place on earth his Uncle Frank saw, rather than at the memorial at Villers-Bretonneux.

“I said to my son Hamish, look this is where Uncle Frank was, these are some of the last places on earth that Uncle Frank would have seen, this territory. I just looked at him and we both went that sounds right, that’s what we need to do. We just did it automatically, even instinctively and there was no reason for that particular grave, it was purely random.”

The Connecting Spirits tours  enable emotions to be shared openly with the group as everyone forms a close bond, through travelling to commemorate the soldiers. When planning the tour there is a focus on how at times, the group finds itself in situations where the story they are pursuing can become upsetting.  However, this is seen to be completely normal by those who are on return tours.    

As a returning member of Connecting Spirits, Mal is able to reflect on several memories and poignant moments throughout each of the tours. However, being able to share the tour with his children was one of the most moving experiences for Mal.  He saw a different side of them, an emotional side, one that was often hidden in everyday life.

“In 2006 on the first trip with my son, when we commemorated Uncle Frank for the first time  at Villers-Bretonneux,  Hamish talked about him first and I was to  follow him,” Mal says. “He was going to do the commemoration and I was going to give some background and he actually burst into tears. That was the first time, especially for a male participant in the group, that I’d seen do that, and for it to be my son was particularly moving for me.”

During the recent tour, the group was introduced to a group of men from the Passchendaele region of Belgium, who spend their time volunteering in the local community to commemorate soldiers who fought in WWI. Gregory Verfaillie and Frank Mahieu welcomed the group with open arms to Polygon Wood and the Connecting Spirits group members were able to observe their passion in keeping the memory of the Australian soldiers and others alive.

“I found them forthcoming with information and really helpful in, in terms of again, putting that stuff in context, details I knew about, but didn’t really have a good understanding of. It's about adding the layer of geography to your understanding and I felt that in a number of situations. An example of this is the village of Noreuil where Herring and Armitage are buried.  I sort of knew about that battle and that the 50^th Battalion was heavily involved in that, but I didn’t really have an understanding of the lie of the land,” he explained. “That’s something I came away with and now I get it:  I can see where they came from, where they attacked.”  

Taking part in a Connecting Spirits tour, whether it's  your first or potentially your seventh like Mal, it is obvious that no tour is identical.  As Mal explained, "Every time we go on tour we come away with something richer and deeper."

As Connecting Spirits continues to evolve, it will do so with Malcolm Jurgs at the helm and those who are lucky enough to travel with him, will share an experience they will never forget.

The Jurgs family commemorate Frank Bartley at the 'adopted' grave of an Unknown soldier in Bellicourt cemetery in 2008. That grave is located in the area where Mal's great uncle was known to have been killed on September 29, 1918. 

 

Mal at Villers Bretonneux memorial where Frank Bartley's name is remembered.

                                   
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Frank's 'adopted' grave at Bellicourt cemetery, Saturday 13 April, 2019