Cheerful 20-year-old stretcher bearer killed by direct shell hit

By Michael Rochfort
Updated March 30 2015 - 3:56pm, first published 3:52pm
Continuing our Faces of Anzacs series, this week we look at stretcher-bearer Valentine Augustine Rochfort, killed in action, aged 20, outside Bray in northern France in August, 1918. While he was brought up in Jerilderie, his mother Emilie Hart was from Pitt Town, and he was related to Hugh Kelly and John Schofield, after whom Kellyville and Schofields were named. Here his great nephew Michael Rochfort, who visited his grave at Villers-Bretonneux in 2013, tells the tale.
Continuing our Faces of Anzacs series, this week we look at stretcher-bearer Valentine Augustine Rochfort, killed in action, aged 20, outside Bray in northern France in August, 1918. While he was brought up in Jerilderie, his mother Emilie Hart was from Pitt Town, and he was related to Hugh Kelly and John Schofield, after whom Kellyville and Schofields were named. Here his great nephew Michael Rochfort, who visited his grave at Villers-Bretonneux in 2013, tells the tale.

I was probably in pre-school when I became aware I had a great uncle who’d died in the First World War. I remember that on visits to my grandfather, also a veteran of the war, I saw the bronze memorial plaque presented to the families of those who’d died in the war.