by Graham Seal
There were examples of wonderful bravery all round us. One boy of 19 and a Corporal the only two left out of a machine gun crew [manned] the gun for four days and nights with practically no sleep, and in spite of splinters from bullets which had hit the gun and had embedded in their arms and hands. They only left when the gun was ruined. I could tell you dozens of equally courageous things.
On Thursday we heard a rumour that our Battalion was reforming on the beach, so I went down to see and found that they had been down resting since the previous afternoon. I went back to tell Everett and Selby to collect my things. They couldn’t leave until officers could be spared to relieve them, so I got together the sergeant and the only one I had left of five stretcher-bearers I had managed to collect (all the others were wounded), and I went down to the valley and slept my first decent sleep with Joe Kenny, who had a section of the 4th Field Ambulance there. I arranged with him to see that the section of trenches I had been looking after were evacuated of wounded and went and joined the battalion. Met Dixon Hearder on the beach; he had been doing great work with his machine guns in the centre. When the Battalion reformed there were 11 officers killed, wounded, or missing, and between 500 and 600 men out of the 1,000 odd of the men who had landed.
I am writing this in my dugout and as there is a good deal of shrapnel kicking and whizzing about just outside us we are sitting tight. The food is pretty good; we have tinned meat, bacon, jam, cheese, and biscuits, besides tea and sugar, with rum twice a week; also spuds and onions. The chaps on the London have been great. Nearly every day a hamper comes over with the bread, tinned milk, butter, cigarettes, tobacco, matches, chutney, sauce and chocolate, golden syrup, and bootlaces. So we are very happy; even when it rains we rig our waterproof sheets for a roof.
Just a line in conclusion about the effect of being under fire on oneself. You read of men crying and laughing and getting hysterical. I have seen a little of that amongst our reinforcements who were not in the first flutter. But I saw none at all in our lot. Everything was so crisp and sudden, and it seemed just as safe to keep going forward as it did to stay where you were. The different sounds of bullets, shells, etc., we are now experts in. There is the sharp crack of the bullet overhead, with a ‘ping’ when it hits anything. There is the nasty, unfriendly swish of one that passes close to your ear. Then there is the ‘crackle’ of a machine gun, changing to a mournful disappointed ‘whisp whisp’ when the bullets get closer. Lastly, there is the cheerful whistle of the shrapnel shell well overhead, and at which we all used to duck (we don’t now, we know they’re safe). It’s the vicious brute that is just past you as you hear it that makes you take cover in case there’s another following it. I heard one fellow in the trenches the other day say to another, ‘One of these days we’ll be standing at the corner of Hay and Barrack streets and a motor tyre will burst close by, and the people around will be wondering why we’re lying on our stomachs.’ ‘And when a barmaid opens a bottle of soda we’ll all be down under the counter’, replied his mate.
Private Punch
Private William Joseph Punch was one of the 500 to 800 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who served in World War I. At least five of these men are buried on Gallipoli, although Punch’s war experience was at the western front. Although his death was sadly typical of the Great War, the story of his life is unusual.
Along the Bland Creek (near Frampton, New South Wales) one night in 1880 a group of Aborigines were murdered by settlers as punishment for cattle spearing. A young man named John Siggs from a local settler family came across the site shortly afterwards and found the only survivor, an infant trying to suckle at his dead mother’s breast. Filled with disgust at the deed and overcome with pity, Siggs took the baby boy and raised him as a member of the family. The story was put about that the boy was from Queensland, possibly to conceal the fact that he was the sole survivor of the massacre. Under the name William Joseph Punch the boy grew up and went to school along with the other children in the region, and he became a noted sportsman, musician and participant in local social activities.
In December 1915, Punch enlisted. He was in camp with 300 other enlistees at the Goulburn Showground until February 1916 when he was transferred to Sydney. He was reportedly a popular man with the troops and eventually joined the 1st Battalion and fought on the western front. He was wounded in September 1916, though he subsequently returned to duty. He was wounded again the following year in France, shipped back to England and nursed, as many Anzac troops were, in the coastal town of Bournemouth, in Dorset.
We may well never have known about Private Punch’s life and death if not for an attempt made by the Returned Services League in 1931 to identify indigenous diggers. That year, the RSL publication Reveille issued a request for information that drew a letter from an Australian nurse who had looked after Punch during his last weeks in the hospital at Bournemouth. Sister O’Shea not only wrote to Reveille about the black digger but also supplied a photograph of him in his hospital bed.
One of Punch’s old mates, W. Scott, also wrote in with his recollections of the man.
I would like to add my quota in remembrance of Bill Punch, of Goulburn, who was admired by all his comrades, and regarded as a ‘Dinkum Digger.’ Bill was a full blooded aborigine—a Queenslander, I think. He was adopted when a youngster by Mr W Siggs of Woodhouselee, between Goulburn and Crookwell, who educated him and employed him as a stockman and station hand up till the time of his enlistment. Bill, as well as being well educated, was a musician of no mean ability, and very popular with his Digger mates. He went through Goulburn and Liverpool camps, and on to Tel-el-Kebir with our reinforcement, the 17th of the 1st Battalion.
Unfortunately, in Egypt, Bill and several others were quarantined for mumps or something and were left behind. We went on to join the 53rd Battalion at Fleur Baix, and Punch and the others eventually joined the 1st Battalion . . .
On 29 August 1917, Private Punch died of pneumonia in the Mount Dore hospital in Bournemouth. He is buried in the Bournemouth East Cemetery, Boscombe.
A soldier of the cross
He was the Salvation Army minister who allegedly led troops into battle brandishing a shovel. This and other legends formed around the remarkable man known as ‘Fighting Mac’, properly William McKenzie, Chaplain to the 4th Battalion, AIF.
Born in Scotland, he arrived in Australia at the age of fifteen in 1884 and quickly adapted to outdoor life in Queensland, cane cutting and dairying. He became a Salvation Army minister in 1889—‘the true religion for a fighting man’, he later said—but retained an intensely practical approach to his duties, which formed the basis of his amazing wartime story on Gallipoli and the western front.
On the transport ship to Egypt he organised sporting events and other recreations for the men, including boxing matches, which he sometimes won against some of the AIF’s hardest nuts. These activities gained him the respect of the troops and legends began to attach themselves to his larger-than-life personality. In Egypt he was rumoured to have been incensed at the rather heavily populated venereal disease treatment camp and to have assisted the troops in pulling down the barbed wire around it.
On Gallipoli he worked tirelessly as a water-bearer, stretcher-bearer and chaplain, burying many men and also providing a ready ear for advice and guidance. It was said that in one three-day period alone he conducted 647 burials. One of his earliest burials was that of Lieutenant Colonel Onslow Thompson, the commanding officer of the 4th Battalion, who was killed on 26 April—‘It was a relief to find the body of our colonel . . . after it had lain out for a full fortnight. We buried it after dark, as it lay in an exposed position. I had to kneel and keep head and body in a crouching posture while reading the service. Hundreds of bullets swept over us while this was going on.’
According to legend, Mac was conducting a service when a Turkish shell exploded nearby, showering him and the congregation with dirt. ‘Hallelujah!’ he called out, as he picked himself up and continue
d the service. Although chaplains were officially prohibited from engaging in combat, McKenzie was involved in many battles. At Lone Pine the troops reputedly begged him not to risk his life but he replied, ‘Boys, I’ve preached to you, and I’ve prayed with you. Do you think I’m afraid now to die with you?’
He continued his hands-on approach on the western front, assisting with the establishment and running of ‘comforts’ such as coffee stalls. He was present at many of the now iconic battles of the war in including Pozières, Bullecourt and Mouquet Farm in France, and Polygon Wood and Passchendaele in Belgium. In 1917, at the age of forty-eight, he was released from service as a result of the decline in his physical health and the emotional toll of the things he had seen and done. McKenzie was the object of deep respect from his comrades and had also become a national hero—he was sometimes called the most famous man in the AIF. He had been decorated in 1916 and there were rumours that he had several times been nominated for the Victoria Cross.
Despite the poor state of his health, McKenzie continued to actively fill a leading role in the Salvation Army after the war, which included spending some years in China. He was awarded an OBE in 1935 and became a popular presence at Anzac Day observances. McKenzie retired from the Salvation Army in 1939 and died in Sydney in 1947. It is said that weeping diggers marched six abreast at his funeral.
Fromelles
The action officially known as the ‘attack’ on the French village of Fromelles was the first to involve AIF troops on the western front. It took place around the villages of Fleurbaix and Fromelles on 19 and 20 July 1916 and includes what is generally considered to have been the worst-ever day of fighting for Australian troops. After it was over more than five-and-a-half thousand Australian troops were dead, wounded or imprisoned. The British also suffered heavy casualties and the action was a strategic failure.
This graphic description published four years after the battle mentions Harold ‘Pompey’ Elliott, a brilliant but independent Australian brigade commander who had already declared Fromelles a hopeless task at the planning stage. His highly trained men were, literally, cut to pieces by the enemy fire and he was seen with tears streaming down his face as he shook hands with the few survivors after the battle.
The morning of the 19th was calm and misty, with the promise of a clear, fine day later. Reports from patrols in No Man’s Land during the night indicated that the damage done to the enemy’s wire was as yet inconsiderable, but no real importance was attached to that, as the chief part of the artillery preparation had still to come. The patrol reports disclosed also that the enemy was very vigilant, and that close inspection of parts of his wire was impossible owing to the presence of strong enemy posts in No Man’s Land. At a quarter past 2 p.m., however, there was a marked increase in enemy counter preparation, and by 3 p.m. a heavy and continuous volume of fire was falling over the front and support line and the saps leading to them, now filled with the assembling infantry. The assembly was reported complete on the 8th Brigade front at 25 minutes past 3 p.m., on the 14th at a quarter to 4 p.m., and on the 15th at 4 p.m. The men had received specially good breakfasts and dinners, and were in high spirits. The enemy fire continued to increase in volume on the front trenches, where already three of the four company commanders of the 53rd Battalion had become casualties.
Punctually at 5.43 p.m. deployment into No Man’s Land commenced, and it was hoped that the artillery barrage would be sufficiently intense to keep enemy heads down until the deployment was completed. On the extreme right of the 5th Divisional frontage the 59th Battalion was scarcely over the parapet before a little desultory musketry fire was opened on it, coming chiefly from the Sugar Loaf. Before the men had gone 30 yards this fire had grown in intensity, and a machine gun added its significant voice to the rapidly increasing fusillade. The waves pressed forward steadily, but just as steadily the enemy fire grew hotter, and the enemy front lines were seen to be thickly manned with troops. The losses mounted rapidly as the men pressed gallantly on into the withering fire. Lieut-Colonel Harris was disabled by a shell, and Major Layh took charge of the dwindling line, which, finding a slight depression about 100 yards from the enemy parapet, halted in the scanty cover it provided, and commenced to reorganise their broken and depleted units.
THE THINNING LINES
The deployment of the 60th Battalion was attended by similar circumstances. Heavy fire was encountered almost from the moment of its appearance over the parapet. Into this the troops pressed with the same steadiness as that displayed by the 59th, and with the same result. The ranks, especially on the right, where they were most exposed to the Sugar Loaf, thinned rapidly; but the later waves followed on without hesitation or confusion. On the left flank more headway was made. To halt in No Man’s Land in these circumstances was to court certain death, and Major McRae led his troops towards the enemy parapet. It was his last act of gallant leadership. Just at the enemy wire the enfilade fire from the Sugar Loaf became intense, and there, almost at his goal, he fell. His adjutant fell beside him, and there, too, the greater part of the 60th Battalion melted away. Only on the extreme left were the enemy trenches entered by elements of the 60th. They appear to have had some temporary success, for they sent back a few prisoners; but, as the official report significantly states, ‘Touch with them was subsequently lost.’ Thus on the entire front the 15th Brigade, within half an hour from the time of assault, it was apparent that the 61st Imperial Division had failed to take the Sugar Loaf strong post, which was its allotted task, and that it was beyond human power to cross so wide a No Man’s Land in the face of the machine-gun fire that streamed continuously from it. By 6.30 p.m. the remnants of the two battalions were doggedly digging in as near to the enemy parapet as they could. Thirty-five out of 39 of the assaulting officers were already killed or wounded, and with them most of the N.C.O.’s. In these circumstances the survivors could only hold on determinedly to what they had won and await such further action as their trusted brigade commander might devise to meet the situation.
The troops of the centre and left brigades, although they had suffered heavily under the preliminary bombardment, experienced in their assault a vastly different fortune. Immune from the fatal enfilade of the Sugar Loaf, the 53rd and 54th Battalions completed their deployment with comparatively slight additional casualties, and as the barrage lifted the leading wave dashed into the enemy front line. The enemy was caught in the act of manning his parapets, and some bitter hand-to-hand fighting followed. It terminated, as all such hand-to-hand fighting terminated throughout the war, in the absolute triumph of the Australians and the extinction or capitulation of the Germans. The front line thus secured, the later waves streamed over it and made for the enemy support trench, which, according to their information, lay about 150 yards behind his front line. The intervening country torn with shell holes, and intersected by communication trenches, was difficult to cross, and it was swept by a certain amount of machine-gun and musketry fire. A careful search of the terrain failed to disclose anything in the nature of an organised enemy support line at the place indicated on the aeroplane maps, and both 53rd and 54th Battalions spent considerable time in searching for one. Except for certain fragmentary trench sections, all that could be found was an old ditch, containing a couple of feet of water. Whatever the purpose of its original construction, it was now used as a drain to convey away the water pumped by pumping plants from the deep dugouts of the front line. The non-existence of an organised support line at the place indicated in the orders was an immediate and fruitful source of complications, aggravated particularly in the 53rd Battalion by the dearth of senior officers. Instead of stepping into a definite and well constructed line, the men became dispersed in the search for one, and with night closing in and the enemy counter-attacks impending the necessity to consolidate somewhere became pressing. This was done, but the line taken up lacked the continuity and lateral communications that a good trench would have afforded. In the circumstances, the 53rd Battalion�
��s touch with the 54th on its left became intermittent, and finally ceased, while even between the elements of the 53rd itself, communication was irregular. The position of the 54th Battalion was materially better. Although three of its four company commanders and three of its four seconds in command wore casualties prior to the assault, Lieut. Colonel Cass had happily escaped injury, and was thus able to direct the consolidation of his position. By strenuous efforts the line of the drain was improved, and a moderately good fire position along the whole of the 54th Battalion frontage was soon in course of construction.
On the left sector, Major-General Tivey was faced from the outset with the heavy responsibility of securing the extreme left flank of the entire battle frontage. At 6 p.m. the battalions stormed over what was left of the enemy wire, and were soon masters of the enemy front trench. Many Germans were killed, and a good number of prisoners taken. Pressing on to their next objective, they met with an experience precisely similar to that of the battalions of the 14th Brigade. An open ditch, containing about 3ft. of water, 150 yards behind the enemy front line, was the only trace of enemy works in the vicinity, and though Lieut-Colonel Toll personally explored the country for several hundred yards farther, he found no trace of an enemy support line. The search for the expected system took many of the officers and men of both battalions into the area of our own protective barrage, and not a few casualties were suffered thereby. Constrained to make the best of things, Colonel Toll ordered his battalion to consolidate along the ditch.
