The Catholic Leader - 22 April

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The Catholic Leader, April 22, 2018
Anzac Day
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By Emilie Ng
NOEL Synnott almost lived his
entire life without knowing his dad’s
fingerprints are on the infamous
Amiens Gun captured by Australian
soldiers in 1918.
The 79-year-old Dutton Park parishioner only
found out nine years ago that his father and
uncle were heroes in the First World War.
Mr Synnott said nine years ago a schoolmate
found the military records for his uncle Lieuten-
ant Bartle Patrick Synnott and his father Corpo-
ral James Hardy Synnott.
Their part in the horrible war, which nearly
wiped out an entire generation of young Austral-
ian men 100 years ago, was never talked about
at home.
A former student of St Joseph’s College,
Gregory Terrace, Mr Synnott also found out at the
school’s “Vintage Terraciens” morning teas that
his uncle was a member of the 1906 Terrace First
Fifteen and another uncle a dux of the college.
“It was all a surprise to me, really,” Mr Syn-
nott said.
“I’ve had these war records, eight or nine
years, and I can’t remember where they came
from except I think an old classmate of mine was
at the war memorial and just as a matter of inter-
est he got these for me.
“Perhaps the older members, my aunts,
thought I knew these things, but I didn’t really.”
Corporal Synnott enlisted in the war on May
20, 1916, and a year later fought in and survived
some of the worst battles on the Western Front
in Bapaume, Polygon Wood, Passchendaele,
Bullecourt, Ypres, Ancre, Amiens, Albert and
Mont St Quentin.
“See all the battles my father was in,” Mr Syn-
nott said, looking at his father’s military record.
“I never knew it.”
Amazingly, Corporal Synnott was a member
of the platoon that captured the infamous Ami-
Brisbane man uncovering ‘surprising’ war stories of dad and uncle
Honouring brave Anzacs
Family memories: Noel Synnott holds a photo of his uncle, Corporal Bartle Patrick Synnott, who was killed in action in Lagnicourt on May 24, 1917. He only learnt of his uncle’s service in the war nine
years ago. Photo: Emilie Ng.
ens Gun, a German 28-centimetre railway gun,
the barrel of which stands out the front of the
Australian War Memorial.
“My brother used to say that (their father
captured the railway gun) but I thought he meant
Dad’s battalion, but it was Dad,” Mr Synnott said.
“It was his platoon, the platoon is about
twenty men, so Dad was in the thick of it.”
Corporal Synnott died in 1944, when Mr Syn-
nott was just five years old.
“He was gassed (in the war) and that short-
ened his life to some extent,” Mr Synnott said.
His memories of his father are vague but he
remembers that his parents “were strong church-
goers”.
Lieutenant Synnott did not live to see his older
brother’s achievements on the Western Front,
having been killed in battle in Lagnicourt on
May 24, 1917, the feast of Our Lady of Help of
Christians.
Five years after his uncle’s death, that Marian
feast day inspired the name for the Bowen Hills
war memorial church, Our Lady of Victories,
where a plaque in honour of Lieutenant Synnott
The parish will hold a
memorial Mass for the 2000
Queensland soldiers and
reinstate the historic honour
roll before a side altar in the
church at 8am on April 22.
Bowen Hills
parish
memorial Mass
The parish will hold
a memorial Mass for
the 2000 Queensland
soldiers and reinstate
the historic honour roll
before a side altar in Our
Lady of Victories Catho-
lic Church.
Tragic history: Our Lady of
Victories Church parish
priest Fr Andrzej Kolacz-
kowski with the historic
roll of honour that bears
the names of nearly 2000
Queensland Catholics who
died fighting for Australia be-
tween 1914 and 1918.
Where: Our Lady of
Victories Catholic Church,
Bowen Hills
When: 8am, Sunday
April 22.
– with his name misspelt – was bolted above the
old baptistery.
Mr Synnott, who worked for 40 years as a
canon lawyer for the Brisbane archdiocese,
received a phone call from the parish last month
notifying him of the plaque.
It was the first time he had heard about it.
He stood beneath the plaque last week, laugh-
ing at the misspelling of his surname.
“Which makes me think that maybe that was
donated by someone else because I would have
thought Grandma and Granddad would have got
the spelling right,” Mr Synnott said.
He also recently found photos of his uncle,
one of his tombstone and two of him in military
uniform “rustling around in the house” where he
has lived for the past 40 years.
One military photo is signed in gold pen,
“Your old cobber. Bart Synnott”.
This weekend the parish will hold a memo-
rial Mass to honour the nearly 2000 Catholic
soldiers, sailors and nurses who died in the war,
and whose names are listed in an honour roll
now reinstated in the church.
Mr Synnott, born 23 years after his uncle died
in France, was among the descendants who would
kneel down to pray for the family members whose
lives were forever changed by the war.
“It’s very thoughtful of people in the parish to
be thinking of people, perfect strangers basically,
who died 100 years ago,” Mr Synnott said.
It’s now up to Mr Synnott to spread word of
his uncle and father’s heroic role in the First
World War to the next generation.
It’s very
thoughtful of
people in the
parish to be
thinking of people,
perfect strangers
basically, who
died 100 years
ago.