Members of the Kalangadoo and wider community will gather on Easter morning (April 20) to honour the wartime service and sacrifice of three servicemen with ties to the local community.
Lance Corporal Charles Stuart Gray was born in Kalangadoo in 1893 and attended Kalangadoo Primary School.
He enlisted in August 1915 along with three other local Kalangadoo lads.
They embarked in January 1916 and were posted to the 13th Reinforcement for the 10th Battalion.
The Battalion was sent to Europe which saw the unit participating in Mouquet Farm, Messines, Polygon Wood and Villers Bretonneux and Hindenburg Line.
After the war he planted pine trees at Nangwarry and Tarpeena and did fencing contracts for many big properties.
Mr Gray married Vera Schmidt in1922 and had four children Nancy, Lawerence, Charles (aka Bruce) and Margaret.
He was very active in the Ex-Serviceman’s Club and RSL, Kalangadoo Football Club and Gun Club.
He died in May 1973 aged 80, buried at the Lake Terrace Cemetery in Mount Gambier.
His son was Leading Aircraftman Lawrence Stuart Gray, of the RAAF.
He was born in Mount Gambier – 1926 and attended Kalangadoo Primary School, before enlisting in July 1944 and completing several courses in Wagga and Ascot Vale (Vic).
He was posted to the No. 2 Operational Training Unit at Mildura in 1945.
Fortunately, with the end of World War II he was not deployed overseas and returned to Kalangadoo and with his brother Bruce opened a store in John Street known as The Gray Brothers,
Lawrie played in the 1950 Kalangadoo A Grade premiership team, unfortunately he missed playing in the 1952 grand final due to a broken collarbone.
He married Yvonne Klieve and had six children, Judith, Maryanne, Naomi, Cathryn, Mark and Louise.
In 1961 a new store was built across the road and was known as Gray’s 4 Square which Lawrie and Yvonne ran for 30 years.
In 1979, he moved to Wandilo where he ran sheep and cattle on the property whilst working for Elders.
He died 1982 and was interred at Carinya Gardens Cemetery, Mount Gambier
Corporal Albert Spencer Masters, of the Australian Imperial Force, was born in Red Hill South Australia in 1906
He married Agnes Whitting in 1925 and had seven children before the war and another during the war.
In 1930 he joined the Militia (48th Battalion Foundation Volunteers) and in 1939 he enlisted and posted to the Royal Australian Engineers, training at Wayville, Woodside, Ingleburn and Greta.
He embarked August 1940 and arrived in Egypt in October, participating in the Siege of Tobruk.
In 1943, his unit returned to Australia for training in Queensland.
The unit took part in the Pacific campaign with involvement in Buna, Sattelberg, Song River Finschafen, Taraken and Labuan.
He returned to Australia August 1945 with a family to support while his wife severely ill, before she passed away in 1954.
Corporal Masters remarried Molly Ryan of Kalangadoo, a widow with three boys and in 1956 a daughter Leanne was born to the couple.
Albert and Molly were very involved in the RSL, caretaker of the Kalangadoo Institute and interested in the Scouts.
Albert’s life was cut short when he was killed in January 1962 in a car accident.
As the Kalangadoo RSL went into recess in the 1990s, the Kalangadoo Remembers committee has arranged a public commemorative ceremony on the Sunday preceding Anzac Day.
It has been the custom to honour particular Kalangadoo service personnel each year.
Many aspects of traditional Anzac Day services are a part of Kalangadoo Remembers.
Official guests include local MPs Tony Pasin and Nick McBride, representatives of Wattle Rangne Council and the presidents of the RSL sub-branches at Mount Gambier, Millicent and Coonawarra/Penola.
After the service, flowers will be placed on the graves of soldiers in the Kalangadoo Cemetery.
A gunfire breakfast will then be served by the Lions Club at the Riddoch memorial Institute at Kalangadoo.
