Szablowsky, Markowicz, Ball
Today we celebrate the lives of three servicemen:
- Born in Dlugosiodlo, Poland; works as a cook on Australian ships.
- He is the first former Russian-born subject to enlist, serving in the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea.
- He leaves for the USA in 1915, where, unemployed in the 1940s, he signs up for WWII service and vanishes from the records.
- Came from a noble Polish family.
- Soon after the Gallipoli landing, he is detained on suspicion of being a spy, and fights for years to clear his name.
- In 1935, defeated, he commits suicide, and is buried by a chevra kadisha, a Jewish burial society.
- A Briton, Ball was born and raised in St Petersburg, and comes to Rutherglen, Victoria at 18.
- Wounded in the Gallipoli landing, he is awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal for gallantry at Lone Pine.
- Killed at the Somme in 1916.
- He is commemorated officially in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and in the local Rutherglen newspaper by his friend, Violet Hicks. His St Petersburg family was never found.