Ten firefighters who lost their lives fighting an out-of-control blaze in country Victoria have been remembered 80 years on.
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It was the middle of World War II when the fire broke out at the Bowser railway yard near Wangaratta in the state's northeast on December 22, 1943.
Volunteers including farmers, factory workers, teachers and schoolboys rushed to fight the blaze as it quickly spread to the small town of Tarrawingee.
But the wind changed direction and eight men and two 14-year-old boys were killed, in what was the greatest loss of life for emergency services personnel in Australia at the time.
The Tarrawingee community and service leaders on Friday gathered to honour those men and boys, 80 years later.
"Regardless of the passing of the years, the shadow of the tragedy stays with us," Country Fire Authority chief officer Jason Heffernan told the crowd.
"It will stay with the families. It will stay with the brigade members. It will stay with the community and it will stay with the CFA.
"The CFA must always honour and remember these fallen heroes."
The great-granddaughter of school teacher Godfrey Spencer, one of the men killed, said his memory and legacy was far-reaching.
"Pericles once wrote, you leave behind not what is engraved in stone monuments but what is woven into the lives of others," Marya Spencer told the crowd.
"We are all living proof that statement is true.
"I never knew my great-grandfather however, like many of you here, I have grown up with the stories of the heroic fight in this very spot 80 years ago."
Floral wreathes were laid at the Tarrawingee Memorial Stone before the names of those killed were read out by brigade captain David Gilbert.
The deadly Tarrawingee fire was the catalyst for the formation of the CFA a year later in 1944.
FIREFIGHTERS KILLED IN THE 1943 TARRAWINGEE FIRE:
* School teacher Godfrey Spencer, aged 53
* Farm manager Andrew Joseph Guthrie, 45
* Farmer John Wolstenholme Marks, 29
* Farmer Arthur Willesley Wellington, 46
* Factory worker Theodore Luke Lea, 32
* Postal linesman Joseph Louis Ryan, 38
* Telephone linesman Edward Laurence Seymour, 33
* Postal linesman Norman John Robinson, 49
* Schoolboy Kevin Dunkley, 14
* Schoolboy Henry Claude Hill, 14
Australian Associated Press
