Exclusive: Daniel Cotterill, whose uncle’s grave has been destroyed, wants Australian officials allowed into Gaza to assess the ‘industrial damage’
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For 84 years, acting corporal Patrick William Cotterill lay at peace in the Gaza War Cemetery.
The young soldier had sailed to the Middle East onboard the Queen Mary early in the second world war, dispatched with the Reserve Motor Transport Company to the 2nd Australian Imperial Force’s Beit Jirja training camp in Palestine.
On 15 July 1941, at Hirbiya beach in Gaza, Cotterill noticed a fellow soldier struggling in the water.
