A Tasmanian family has finally discovered the fate of a Belgian boy Australian soldiers smuggled out of the horror of WWI-ravaged Belgium, to a new life on a farm near Hobart.
Tasmanian Private George Leahy stuffed 12-year-old Albert Dussart – nicknamed by the troops “Garçon”, which is French for “boy” – into a bag in 1918 to get him to England after the boy sought refuge with Australian soldiers fresh from the trenches.
When the scheme was uncovered, Leahy fought a running battle with the Australian Army, and the English and Belgian military and civil authorities, to get the boy to Australia.
Leahy left his camp at least twice on emergency train trips, after the boy was taken by UK police, culminating in shots being fired at him as he desperately jumped a port security fence in his search for Albert.
After a string of misadventures and confrontations, General John Monash intervened and allowed Albert to return with the soldiers on the TSS Port Sydney in 1919.
