Contributed by Ron Inglis, October 2021:
George Richard Arthur Bell, 34, was a motor mechanic having completed a five-year apprenticeship at the Clyde Engineering works. He was married to Ethel Maud Bell and they lived in Harrow Road Auburn. George, a member of St Philip’s Anglican Church at Auburn, enlisted at the RAS Showgrounds, Moore Park, on 25 September 1916 and embarked on the Persic on 22 December 1916.
Disembarking in Devonport, United Kingdom, on 3 March 1917 he had further corps training on the Salisbury Plain before proceeding to France on 20 June 1917, where he was posted to the 4th Australian Division Supply Column. Bell had a stay in hospital for Scabies and then in March 1918 he was invalided back to the UK, to the 2/1st General Hospital in Birmingham, suffering from Trench Fever. He did not return to France until 27 October 1918, where he died of appendicitis on 1 December 1918.
Corporal Bell has the sad distinction of being the last identified Auburn Memorial man to have died in the Great War. He lies in the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery, a greenfields cemetery set up immediately after the war to receive bodies from numerous surrounding battlefield plots. Bell had originally been buried in the Dury Hospital Military Cemetery, about 25 kms away, a cemetery adjacent to a British hospital on the southern side of Amiens.
The Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery was designed by the distinguished British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, famous for his Cenotaph in London's Whitehall and many other Great War monuments. In this cemetery there are 2,144 burials, 1,547 of which are identified. There are 733 Australians in the cemetery.
In 1938, the Australian National Memorial was built on the eastern side of this cemetery and unveiled by King George VI. In 2018, the Sir John Monash Visitors Centre, on the eastern side of the Australian memorial, was unveiled by the Australian Prime Minister at the time, Malcolm Turnbull.
13191 G R A Bell is not related to the other Bell on the Auburn War Memorial, 2331 William Stanley Bell.
George Bell is honoured on the following memorials in Australia:
- Auburn War Memorial
- Municipality of Auburn 1914-1919 Honour Roll
- St Philip’s Anglican Church Auburn First World War Honour Roll
- Roll of Honour Australian War Memorial Canberra
His decorations:
- British War Medal
- 1914-20 Victory Medal
