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Emma Tout: Grieving Mother of a Missing Son

Emma Tout’s son Leonard disappeared without trace in World War 1. She found it difficult to accept he was dead and grew angry that his body was never found.

Leonard Gladstone Tout, a 21 year old clerk from Richmond, died in France on the 3rd of May 1917 in the second battle of Bullecourt.

Along with thousands of others his body was never recovered. He was reported as “missing in action”.

Typewritten report of an eyewitness to Leonard Tout's last known location

Document - Report, Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau , 'Statement made by Private Heatley re: Private Tout, 24th Battalion, Missing 3/5/17', 22 October 1917, Australian War Memorial

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Leonard’s whereabouts were traced by the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau. The Bureau sent out searchers for news.

Reports came back and though no definitive eyewitnesses saw him die, the consensus view was that he was dead as Leonard’s Battalion that day had seen large casualties. A court of military inquiry held in December 1917 pronounced Leonard killed in action.

Letter - From Emma Tout to Vera Deakin, 18 February 1918, Australian War Memorial

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Emma couldn’t accept Leonard was dead.

In early 1918 she wrote a letter to Vera Deakin, Secretary of the London Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau, asking her to try again to trace him. ”Dear Miss Deakin,” Emma wrote, “You may think me foolish, but I have an inspiration, or something else, - call it what you will – that he is not dead. It may be only a mother’s fancy, but I think I would know as there was such a strong bond between us...I have an idea that he is a prisoner and not able to write.”

The London Bureau responded that they could not help as they believed he was dead: ‘We very much regret that we can hold out no hope of his being a prisoner.”

Letter - From Emma Tout to the Secretary of Defence, 27 February 1920, National Archives of Australia

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By 1920, Emma was convinced of Leonard’s death, but frustrated that his body was never found.

In response to an official request for information for graves registration purposes, Emma wrote: “I think it seems rather foolish to reply ... being fully convinced (with thousands of other mothers) that my boy has no grave as he was reported missing. I think it would be far nicer if the Authorities had erected a memorial in each State where mothers could place a wreath on the anniversary of her boy’s death instead of a stone put up where she will never see it.”

The Officer in Charge of Base Records in Melbourne wrote back to Emma that “an intensive search is now being made over all old battlefields with a view to locating unregistered graves, and should the grave of your son be discovered, you will be notified through this office.”

But notification never came. Leonard’s body was lost forever. His name along with the names of 10,728 other missing Australian servicemen is listed on the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in the Somme, France.

Emma would grieve Leonard the rest of her life. Her younger son John, too young to serve in WW1, enlisted instead in WW2. He would join his son John ‘Jack’ Leonard Tout, named in honour of his dead uncle, both serving in the Air Force. Fortunately both John and Jack returned safely from that war. Emma died in 1961 in Melbourne.