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.

Albert was one of the many orphans or displaced children who were adopted by groups of larrikin Australians soldiers, many as mascots who ran errands or did jobs for the troops, in exchange for food and clothing.

Just two weeks before Australia celebrates the centenary of Gallipoli, George Leahy's descendants have found out what happened to the boy who was last seen by family members and friends in Tasmania in about 1923.

Albert Dussart moved to NSW later in life and recorded his story in 1990, retelling a boy's adventure with the Australian troops he clearly had a great fondness for. ( Craig Dussart )

Sonya Moon only found out five weeks ago how her great grandfather George Leahy had taken the boy under his wing.

"Albert told the soldiers all his family had been killed, his sisters and his mother ... and basically he wandered into the 26th Battalion, which my great grandfather was in," she said.

"He took a shine to my great grandfather, he found him after he came back from being on duty, and there was this young boy sitting in my great grandfather's tent washing his socks.

"He was starving and very upset and the diggers took him under their wing and he became their mascot.

"The records I have got show him as the adopted son of my great grandfather George, and he came down to Hobart, and he lived on a farm with George and his wife at Pelverata.

"He went to school there and then did odd jobs on farms ... and was in Tasmania until 1923 or 1924.

"That was where the story stopped for me. That was what triggered the search for me."

Surname mix-up discovered, leading to records of Albert's life

The breakthrough came two weeks ago when Belgian consul documentation from the 1930s revealed that Australian authorities and his Tasmanian family were using an incorrect surname for Albert. It was not Dusserq, but Dussart.

Since Sonya Moon discovered her great grandfather's central role in smuggling Belgian boy Albert Dussart to England and then taking him to Tasmania, she has been searching to learn his fate. ( ABC News )

Albert's history was then quickly filled in.

"There was a lot of media in 1968 trying to find Albert ... so doing a bit of fiddling with searching there was certainly an Albert Dussart family in New South Wales."

Ms Moon quickly contacted Craig Dussart, Albert's grandson, who knew little about Albert's time in Tasmania, nor of the man who adopted him, but was able to confirm much of the version of Albert's adventures with Australian troops.

Ms Moon also discovered Albert decided to leave Tasmania for greener pastures in New South Wales in about 1923.

"Without a guarantee and assurance from my great grandfather in taking him under his wing and adopting him, he may not have ever have got to Australia," she said.

Albert smuggled into England

The story first came to light when published in the magazine "Homing" in 1919, which appears to have been compiled on the boats by troops coming back from the war.

The recounting in that magazine is that the boy, then called Albert Dusserq, had lost his father in a mine accident in 1909, and was separated from his mother and four sisters.

He wandered across the lines and into the path of the allied army, uncared for, hungry, friendless and ill-kempt.

At a village near Charleroi he came to the Australians and Tasmanian Private George Leahy of the 26th Battalion.

The Australians fed and clothed him, and he then set off to find his family.

Albert's story was first told in the troop Magazine "Homing" in 1919 ( Public domain )

The magazine recounted the boy returned soon after, sobbing and worn out with the fatigue and tragedy of the journey, to tell a tale of his ravaged village, and that his mother had been killed by the Germans and his four sisters had died of deprivations of the war.

The story that Albert was without immediate family in Belgium was one emphasised to UK and Australian authorities.

It was then that Leahy decided to adopt the boy, who it was recalled called him "Fader Leahy" ("Fater" in German means father), and take him back to Tasmania.

What followed was a classic Australian larrikin snub of authority, rules and regulations to achieve what Leahy considered was a just and fair outcome, a course of action that nowadays would probably be far less likely to ever happen.

Leahy broke many rules and generally thumbed his nose at authority, and even risked his life to get the boy to Tasmania.

When the Armistice was signed soldiers were repatriated and Leahy said he stuffed Albert in his kitbag to get him across the English Channel.

The first problem arose when, according to the magazine and Leahy's statement back in Australia, his mates on the boat could not hold their silence and the word got back to officers that "the garçon" was on board.

The boat moved away from the dock after unsuccessful searches, and just then the boy emerged.

Leahy's recollection is that for the entry to England, the boy was hidden in the bag again and passed by officials undetected to the Australian camp at Sutton Veny.

There permission was refused to take Albert to Tasmania.

Escape, recapture, escape, and then permission to travel

Leahy later recalled in Tasmania that at the camp he one day saw military police throwing Albert into the back of a truck, and the boy cried out "Fader, Fader!"

Both the magazine and Leahy state the boy was taken to police headquarters and detention centre in Warwick Square in London.

Leahy got 14 days leave and went to London to see the Belgian consul.

He was asked to return the next day where he was questioned by police and then jailed for the afternoon.

Both Leahy's later account and the magazine retell that when Leahy arrived back at the Australian army camp, Albert was there, having escaped from detention.

However, again the boy disappeared from the camp and Leahy took leave again to find him, thinking he was heading back across the channel.

Leahy said he jumped a nine-foot security fence at the docks, telling security guards he was a grave digger and had lost his pass.

When it appeared the ruse was unlikely to succeed he tried jumping the fence again and military police fired two shots at him.

He jumped on the first train back to the camp, to find Albert had returned after having escaped a second time from detention.

Albert Dussart seated in front, one in from left, next to Private George Leahy as troops prepare to return to Australia on the TSS Port Sydney ( TAHO )

General John Monash gave Leahy permission to take Albert to Australia and on September 22 1919, they boarded the TSS Port Sydney, raising 50 pounds for Albert's education on the way.

He was coming to Australia as an orphan, whose mother and four sisters had died at the hands of the Germans.

Back in Tasmania, Leahy started farming at Pelverata near Huonville, with Albert attending the primary school until he was 14.

Then Albert left to work on other farms, until contact was lost a few years later.

Leahy recalled in later years that bits of information came through, including in the early 1930s when police approached him about Albert's application to the Belgian consul to pay his and his family's fares back to Belgium.

Leahy said he wrote five letters to a New South Wales address he was given, but he never received answers.

Albert's voice lives on

In 1990, Albert Dussart, then 84, recorded an interview about his experiences with Chris Sullivan for his folklore collection.

His tale is one from the perspective of a seven to 12-year-old boy in war, where the experiences are remembered as a time of high excitement, and there is little unprompted recollection of the horror.

His memory of events coincided with much of what is retold in "Homing", and what is known by George Leahy's and Albert's families and in newspaper reports in the 1960s.

He said when he came across the Australian troops he was in a desperate state, that his mother had died from TB, and he did not know where his brother and sister were.

Authorities did not know Albert had in fact been in an orphanage with his brother and sister when war broke out.

Albert said the soldiers gave him food and blankets and he woke the next morning to a sea of faces of Australian soldiers around him.

The soldiers were members of the 26th Battalion, and included George Leahy.

Albert said it was soon after that the smuggling plans began,

"We'll take you back to Australia [they said] ... they were a good mob," Albert recalled.

Albert Dussart was taught to box by the Australian troops, who tried to line up fights for him in South Africa on the way back to Australia. ( Craig Dussart )

Albert remembered being in a chaff bag, not a kit bag.

Albert recounted he was discovered by officers on board, while the troops were disembarking and waiting on a nearby train to be taken to a camp.

He was eventually bundled onto the train with military police and taken to Warwick Square detention, to be sent back to Belgium.

He said he was treated well, but only days later he used the chance to post a letter to thank Australian troops as his escape chance and ran from the guards.

After a week of freedom he ended up back at the camp where he was met with a warm welcome and approval was given for George Lahey to take him back to Tasmania.

He recounted the voyage back to Australia with a wild, at times drunken, brawling bunch of soldiers, some accumulating minor to extremely serious charges as they travelled back, breaking rules and regulations, with one allegation of a murder in South Africa.

Albert touches on boxing matches, bayoneting during arguments, soldier assaults on military police with sandbags (because the assault did not draw blood), race relations, mud and slaughter, deserters, grog running to the soldiers locked in the clink, and eventual dropping of all kinds of charges and penalties when the troops arrived back in Australia with "a pardon from King George".

The larrikin image he paints is summed up by his story of the visit of King George to review the police troops.

He said the king came to France to review Australian troops in 1916 or 1917.

He said as the band struck up "God Save the King, King George's horse bucked and threw him off.

"All the diggers thought it was great ... mostly bush blokes, they roared laughing," he said.

"One Bloke, one wag, sang out: 'Goodbye George, give our love to the missus'.

"Oh they were a bloody wild mob."

Ms Moon wants to tidy up the accounts from the troop magazine and the accounts of Albert and other sources, and try to clarify and confirm the details.

"I want to see what sort of correspondence and what sort of information was about at the time.

"It is pretty amazing to me that an Australian got permission to bring out a young Belgian boy out from England, because in the end he did get permission."

Sonya Moon has made contact with the grandson of Albert Dussart, and is now searching for the answers to more questions. ( ABC News )

Ms Moon is also interested in Albert's retelling later in life that he did in fact have a brother and sister in Belgium when he left in 1918, Albert said he visited Belgium in 1970s but could not find them in the short time he was there.

"It would be really lovely to see if there was some family connection that could be made there."

What intrigued Ms Moon about Albert was his sense of boyhood adventure, over and above the horror of the war.

"He tells it with such joy, and it really does sound like the great adventure," she said.

"It was reported at the time that this young boy had such an amazing adventure and I thought that was a strange way to portray it considering he had lost all his family and had come half way around the world , and everything was so unknown.

"But when you really hear his story you can hear that sense of adventure and I really do think he pretty well loved every minute, particularly being with the Australian soldiers."