When 17-year-old De La Salle Cronulla student Matthew Claridge was looking for a subject for his HSC art class an unexpected parcel from his grandmother created a rare opportunity.
Matthew opened to to find it contained the personal effects of his great, great uncle who had served and died on the Western Front a century ago this year.
William Dingley jnr was one of our "Lost Diggers" whose body was never identified and Matthew wanted to bring his memory back to life and return him to the family.
“The idea started when I went through the documents and photos,” Matthew said.
“Thousands of soldiers lie in unmarked graves, I wanted to show people that William Dingley had a face and a family waiting at home.”
On October 9, 1917, 1250 young Australians fell dead or wounded in the mud at the Battle of Poelcapelle while advancing on Passchendale.
Among them was 20-year-old William Dingley and he now lies with his fallen comrades in Flanders fields.
I wanted to show people William had a face and a family waiting at home
- Matthew Claridge
Matthew, who bears a striking resemblance to his forebear, has used old burlap as a canvas to paint William.
“It’s the HSC, I thought I should do something more creative,” Matthew said.
It seemed an appropriate material as supplies arrived at the front in burlap bags which were then converted into sandbags to line the trenches.
Matthew intends to collage the background of his painting with replicas of William's personal effects such as his prayer book and letters home written on paper supplied by the YMCA .
Commemorations have begun across the Commonwealth and in Europe for the Passchendale campaign which lasted for 105 days and cost around 450,000 lives.
The British forces gained only 5 miles of ground at a cost of 2,100 lives per day.
William Dingley was one of 42,000 Allied bodies never recovered.
The tragedy of William's short life was underlined by the death of his best mate who was serving next to him as he fell at the Somme and the irony that his father William Dingley snr, who had joined up to keep an eye on William, had returned safely to Australia discharged due to ill health but without his son.
