…although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man’s life, detail is always welcome.

—Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark

In the case of my great-uncle, George Norman (“Norm”) Olds, that detail is sparse indeed and his public existence is now reduced to a single reference on Google, a mention that barely replicates what that moss-bound tombstone usually contains. Born in 1895 in Glebe, an inner-city suburb of Sydney, Australia, he saw active service in the Great War in Turkey, Egypt and France and was killed in action in the Somme on 27 March 1917. He is apparently buried in Bapaume Communal Cemetery in Pas-de-Calais. (In March 1917 the allies occupied Bapaume.) (more…)