21-05-2025
Streets to be named after Kapooka Tragedy victims
On May 21, 1945, Geoffrey Partridge and 25 other soldiers died in Australia's worst training accident just months before the end of World War II.
The army engineers, known as sappers, were training in a bunker at the Kapooka Army Base near Wagga Wagga when an explosion killed all but one.
Eighty years on, Sapper Partridge's only sister Shirley Booth remembers it like it was yesterday.
"My father turned up [at my school] in tears and I had never seen my father cry," she said.
"The headmaster took him inside, and then the headmaster had come out and told me that my brother had been killed."
Ms Booth, who was 12, said the news didn't fully sink in at first, but when it did, it hit home hard.
Years later, she learnt her 18-year-old brother had seen the dentist that morning and was told he didn't have to return to training, but he did anyway.
"He said, 'No, I want to keep up with my training', and that was where he walked from Kapooka down to where the accident actually happened," Ms Booth said.
Within a couple of hours, her brother was dead.
She said it was only in the 1980s when she obtained records of the incident from the army that she first learnt who had died alongside her brother.
Cherie Benn's uncle Jack Nixon was another killed in the blast.
Her father would say his brother was killed in the war.
It wasn't until 50 years after the tragedy in 1995 that she learned more about what happened that day, and she first attended a commemoration in the paddock where the explosion took place.
Ex-military investigator Andrew Johnston served at Kapooka in the 1990s and never heard of the tragedy.
Then one day, he stumbled on an internet article about tragedies on home soil.
"Having been a soldier that raised a bit of interest to me," Mr Johnston said.
He decided to write a book on the incident to help bring closure to families of the victims and ensure they were remembered.
In 1945, Kapooka was the training centre for all army engineers.
Mr Johnston said the army had devised a system to conduct military exercises with explosions above ground while lessons were held underground.
On May 21, the soldiers had been learning about explosives and detonators.
"The instructor, Jack Pomeroy, was giving instruction to his trainees in the dugout with him, and at the time there were high explosives in a box in the corner," he said.
"And then, unfortunately, Corporal Bill Cousins came in with the detonators and something happened in which the detonators sparked and set off the high explosives.
"As a result, everything went up and collapsed the dugout and killed 26 innocent soldiers."
Mr Johnston said the sole survivor, Sapper Allan Bartlett, was looking away when the incident happened, and the exact circumstances around how the tragedy unfoldeded remain a mystery.
Following the tragedy, the victims received the nation's largest military burial with thousands of people turning out to pay their respects, and then Mr Johnston said Australia effectively forgot.
In addition to the annual memorial service for the tragedy, this year for the 80th anniversary, the Wagga Wagga City Council will unveil streets named in honour of the Kapooka tragedy victims.
The School of Military Engineering, now based in Sydney, will send a large contingent of officers.
Deputy head of the Royal Australian Engineers, Lieutenant Corporal Thomas Whale, said it was important the school's future leaders learnt about the tragic day.
"To ensure they understand this important part of our culture and understand the gravity of their positions and the fact that training incidents like this can happen," he said.
Lieutenant Corporal Whale said wartime deaths on home soil "don't quite" get the same recognition as those overseas, but the "damage is done either way".
"Whether you die in service overseas or you die preparing for war, it's the same death, it affects the family of that person just the same as the death overseas," he said.
"Potentially, we need to look at ways to make sure that we commemorate it in the same manner."
It comes as the Royal Australian Engineers Association of Victoria pushes for a national memorial to all those killed or injured in training accidents on home soil.
"There are many men and women who do suffer from accidents, incidents and even death on home soil," association president Don Hughes said.
"I think the recognition of that is becoming greater and it's well deserved.
