Before pneumonia claimed his life suddenly in August 1917, Young fruit and vegetable shop keeper John (known as Jack Carraill) would have wondered every day what would have become of his younger brother Stanley who vanished while fighting on the Western Front line nine months earlier.
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It was an agonising black hole in Jack's life.
But he was spared even worse grief as before another year has passed two more brothers were to fall in France.
In the space of just two years, four of the five sons on Margaret Carraill, whose husband had died in 1913, had tragically died before her.
The Carraill soldiers were all nuggetty men, all less than five feet six inches and involved in labouring or farming.
Blue eyed Stanley stood five foot six inches in his socks and weighed 128 pounds when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces at Cootamundra on 24 th July aged 24 years and six months.
His big brother Jack had moved from South Australia to the Young District in 1907 and later bought the property "Lanark" which he operated as a dairy and a small orchard before buying a fruit and vegetable run and later taking over a fruit and vegetable mart in Boorowa street.
Stanley came over from South Australia sometime later to work with Jack and could have lived a comfortable and profitable life in Young had he not answered the plea for help that came from the ANZACs who had landed at Gallipoli three months before Stanley had enlisted.
Stanley joined the 19th Battalion, 5th Reinforcements and was given the Regimental number 2374.
His unit embarked from Sydney on 5 October 1915 on board HMAT A32 THEMISTCLES.
After a short time in Egypt, Stanley arrived in France as a Private on 26 March 1916.
Like so many on the Western Front, Stanley was afflicted by scabies, which was spread by lice in the trenches and made life merry hell for soldiers.
He was hospitalised by the condition in September and returned to the trenches on the 14 October before falling in the Battle of Flers on the Somme on the 14 November.
Reported missing in the muddy and bloody battlefield on 14 November, Stanley's death was not confirmed until 11 December 1917.
Even so, Stanley's mother on 10 January 1918, grieving the death of first born son Jack at Young five months earlier, was still in the dark about the fate of Stanley She wrote to Base Records asking "will you do your best to find out the facts of the case".
