ANZAC Sons

by Allison Marlow Paterson

  Pte. Geo. Tennyson Marlow

  Pte. Amos H. Haw

  Pte. Allan Sharp Marlow

  Pte. David Leslie Townsend7

  Pte. Percy Place Marlow

  Pte. John Theodore Price

  Pte. David Wilson Townsend

  I cannot help but wonder whether the ‘Immortal Honour Roll in Heaven’ was divided into Allied and Axis soldiers for, according to both, God was on their side. Such was the propaganda, the stirring words delivered from pulpits in the small townships and in the cities across the world.

  As the propaganda increased in intensity, so too did the pressure on young Australian men and their parents. Jim and Albert sat in the congregation while honour was bestowed on their brothers; the eldest and the youngest had been rejected. Enlistment conditions had now been relaxed and it is possible that Jim could have been accepted to serve in some capacity. Albert, however, required his parents’ consent. As the family sat on the wooden pews on a cold winter’s evening, Sarah and Charles must have proudly read the names of their sons, yet also felt the weight of the Reverend’s words. Albert was frustrated. He was not about to wait another two and a half years until parental consent was no longer necessary. The war could well be over by then.

  AT SEA, JULY

  As their names were proudly being unveiled in the tiny church at Mologa, Percy and Allan were now two weeks into their journey across the Indian Ocean. Allan’s excitement was palpable, he was soon to see exotic places of which he had only heard and read. For a young man from the country for whom a trip to the city was a rare treat, to journey across the world was an improbable adventure.

  July 5th 1916

  Somewhere at Sea

  SS Runic

  My Dear Mum & Dad

  Well Mum we are enjoying ourselves tip top time. None of us have been sick yet, a terrible lot of the boys have been sick, this is the best time ever I had. We go on parade every day now, but we don’t do such a great lot talk about eat mum, I can eat something awful and we get terrible good tucker. Well Mum I am going to post this letter at Durban or Capetown. We don’t know exactly which place we are calling at. Now mum I will start and tell you what we have done and what we have seen right from the day we embarked. Well mum we left the pier on that Tuesday about 1 o’clock and about 5.30 we got to the heads, there a pile of boats pulled up along side our boat and took away mail. I did not know that they would be doing it so soon or I would have wrote to you. Well Mum we got our hammocks issued to us at 6 o’clock that night. They hang from each floor of the deck above it, and I can tell you they was some fun that night when we were going to bed, but they are first class to sleep in and I sleep right on the outside near the porthole and it is just the thing. We first sailed it was a bit cold now the weather is warmer and it gets a bit stuffy in the night, mind you, we are exceedingly lucky to be where we are because we are on the top deck and we will appreciate it when we get into the tropics. We get up at 6 in the morning I always get up early so I can get a wash before the crowd gets there, Mum I know you wont credit that because I was generally a wee bit fond of the bed, but it is a fact. Anyway after we wash it is 7 o’clock, then it [is] breakfast we get porridge stew, or curry and coffee. Then we are all cleared out from down below, to the top deck, so that the orderly can wash up. And scrub the floor, at nine o’clock we go on parade till 12 then it is dinner time, we get soup roast meat and pudding for dinner. Then at 2 oclock we go on parade again till 5 then it [is] tea time, We get bread butter jam and cheese for tea, then at 8.30 we got to bed. Well mum you will be wondering why we did not write before but it is because we never called at any ports. The one that we are going to now will be the first one, and as I said before I am not sure what one it will be. We was on the boat two days when I got a letter from Albert I can tell you I was pleased to get it. Last Sunday week we could see West Australia at a big distance and [a] few whales, porpoises and numerous other sea birds and animals. We get boat drill here in case of mishaps. We have had [a] lot of rain since we have been on board and few rough nights and days. There is canteen on board tobacco and cigarettes are very cheap, just about half the price to what they are in Victoria. There is a barbers shop here too. We have boxing and wrestling matches too, so things are pretty lively. It is a very clean boat there are about 2 000 soldiers on board also a very valuable cargo, such as motor cars and terrible lot of wheat and a lot [of] valuable cargo. We do not pick up our escorts until we get to Africa, I thought we were going to have them from Australia but it not so. Well mum I started this letter last Wednesday and I am finishing it today Sunday the 9th. Well mum we got up this morning and we had bacon and liver for breakfast, but the tucker has been a bit crook lately, not near so good as before. We went to church about 10 oclock and it finished at 11 oclock. We hold the church parades on the top deck. I looked at the watch at 10.30 and by the time in Australia it was 5.30 so I suppose you were all busy at tea. I have been all over the boat except the stoke hole and I am going down there today. I am playing in a big euchere tournament tonight. If I should win it would be worth about ₤5. Well Mum I think I have told you all the news so I hope you get this letter. We are getting off at Cape Town. They tell us it will be for four days. They are going to give us a big route march there. We arrive there Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. Well mum and Dad I will say goodbye for the present and I hope you are all well as it leaves us all at present.

  I remain

  Your Loving Son

  Allan S

  Frank Penglase is on the boat too. We have not been a bit sick yet. I would not mind if I was a sailor I simply love the water. The weather is getting a bit warm now. We are going to have some very ruff weather now as we are near Africa. It is getting ruff now. Mum I am pleased to say that we are going to England. Well that is what we hear.

  As usual, Percy was less enthusiastic than his twin brother. The weather was disagreeable, he was missing the newspapers and he hankered for a decent cup of tea:

  At Sea

  Sunday

  Dear Charlie

  … Well Charlie we get good meals on board, a bit of a change from camp, we get porridge in the morning and soup at dinner time, it substitutes for tea then. The only thing I don’t like is the tea it has a funny taste. We have sixteen to a table; for a start there was a few sick and it made a lot for what was left. Brookes has been fairly crook he was in the hospital for a couple of days with sea sickness. We have drill on board, start at nine and knock off at half past four, we have a fairly easy time, there is not much room for drill it is amusing sometimes, we will be doing physical jerks, and the boat will roll and over a lot will go. There was church parade today, all had to come out in uniforms; through the week it is blues. Well Charlie news is scarce. I suppose you are having a good time today, I would give anything to see a paper now. There is not much amusement on board not much room for anything. Well Charlie I think I have told you all the news so I will close from

  Your loving brother

  Percy.

  Allan kept busy over the next few days writing to his parents and Albert:

  At Sea

  11.7.16

  Dear Albert

  … I played in euchre tournament last night and won it. We have to go on parade everyday but we don’t do such lot of work. We are calling at a port in a couple of days and I hope to see Uncle Arthur there.8 How are the crops looking. Have you finished working out at Bob’s yet. Well Albert news is scarce as we are not allowed to say much. Have you heard from Georgie lately, I hope we meet him over there. We are not allowed to say where we are going but we can form a good idea all the same. I suppose you are still going down South Calival way. Remember me to them all next time you go. How do they take it about us going. Is Charlie still thinking of having another cut. This boat is a very good sailing vessel. We are in for a bit of ruff weather now. There is a canteen on board and you can get drinks, biscuits, tinned fruit and tobacco and cigarettes …

  The sight of land after thre
e weeks at sea aroused great excitement among the troops aboard the Runic. As the ship sailed into Table Bay in South Africa, the prospect of leave and, for many, the opportunity to set foot on and explore the scenery of a new country, was greeted with raucous enthusiasm. For five days the Australians enjoyed the sights of Cape Town, appreciating the kindness of the locals, including the ‘pretty girls’.

  Capetown

  Dear Albert

  Well Albert we are having a fine time here. We have had a good look around the town and the district surrounding it. The scenery around the cape is lovely. We had a motor car and we motored around the hills etc. We went to a theatre the other night and it was very poor. I don’t think I have heard anything worse and it cost 3 /- to hear it. The streets of the town are very narrow and not too clean. The town itself is full of blacks. On [censored] we went for a march to Rosebank it is a very pretty place. It is about a 5 mile march. The ladies of the district out there gave us a bit of a picnic. They did not know we were coming until we were half way out. Anyway we had a fine time. Well Albert I will tell you more news next time, as I have posted a lot of letters home and I hope you get them. I also sent a cable home. How are things around Mologa. I suppose the crops are good. We had a bonnie trip over here. None of us have been sick but Peter Owens is in the hospital. He is pretty crook. Les in the hospital with bronkitus. I would not say anything to the people if I were you. Well Albert we are moving out shortly. Well Albert I say goodbye for the present. Hoping you are all well as it leaves me at the present.

  I remain

  Your loving brother

  Allan

  From Durban and Cape Town, Allan sent home picture souvenirs on which he had described his experiences. He rode in a rickshaw, visited noted places of interest and delighted in the beautiful scenery. The young ladies also inspired him to write ‘I never saw such pretty girls’. It is clear that Allan was determined to take advantage of the opportunity to become a ‘six bob a day tourist’.

  FROMELLES, FRANCE, JULY

  As the 38th Battalion prepared to depart Cape Town and George was moving south to Amiens, the Australians of the 5th Division were about to launch an assault. This was to be a diversionary action, designed to keep German troops pinned down in the north and away from the Somme front, and would involve the Australians in their first full-scale attack on the Western Front. An infantry advance to the north close to Armentieres was to proceed despite an earlier unsuccessful attempt. These troops were now to take the high ground of the heavily fortified Sugarloaf salient on Aubers Ridge, a position which allowed German observers a clear view of the Allied lines. The Australians would attack towards the village of Fromelles, close to the area of the front in which George had been positioned at nearby Fleurbaix just a few weeks prior.

  The 5th Division, led by Major General James McCay of Victoria, now faced the prospect of launching its first action on the Western Front.9 The newly arrived Australians of II Anzac Corps were relatively unprepared. The artillery of both the 4th and 5th divisions, which largely consisted of rapidly trained men from the inexperienced troops in Egypt, was to provide the preparatory artillery bombardment. The 5th Division and the recently arrived British 61st Division were to advance on Aubers and take the village of Fromelles, almost two kilometres behind the German line. Australian Brigadier ‘Pompey’ Elliott of the 15th Brigade warned of impending disaster; the troops were inexperienced and the quality of the artillery support was highly questionable. The German soldiers were well-trained and battle hardened, protected by strong defences with a clear view of Allied preparations; they had been in this section of the line for months and knew the area intimately. Against the odds, the Allied attack was ordered to proceed.10

  On 19 July at 6.00 pm, in full daylight, with some three hours before dusk, the attack was launched. German artillery fire had already bombarded the troops as they waited in the trenches for zero hour. The bombardment had killed or wounded many Australians even before the signal to go over the top. The dead choked the trenches. Elliott’s 15th Brigade was decimated while trying to cross a distance of 400 metres toward the Sugarloaf salient. Those of the 8th and 14th brigades who reached no man’s land were easy targets. Those troops not rescued by courageous survivors were left to die in agony where they fell; over five nights the Australians continually risked their own lives to rescue their mates.

  Fromelles was a disaster. Australia suffered 5533 casualties in what was to become known as the bloodiest 24 hours in Australian military history. Over 1900 men had been killed, almost 1300 with no known grave. Some 470 men were to spend the rest of the war in German prison camps. It was a military disaster on a grand scale. In some of the most brutal fighting of the entire war there was one notable and later notorious survivor, a German lance corporal named Adolf Hitler.

  With the heavy toll of casualties, the 5th Division was incapable of offensive action for some months following Fromelles. The survivors were demoralised and the failed attack would haunt Pompey Elliot for the rest of his life. He committed suicide in 1931.

  POZIERES, FRANCE, JULY

  The troops of the 1st Division had been hurried by train to billets in the villages north of picturesque Amiens, 90 kilometres south of Fromelles. They were now preparing for their part in supporting the Somme Offensive. George kept a list of the villages in which he had been billeted or close to where he had served in the trenches. It now read:

  Godewaersbelde

  La Creeche

  Bertham

  La. Haalobean

  Erquinham

  Fleurbaix S

  Sailly

  Neuve Eglise

  Messines S

  Bailleul

  Doullens

  Berteaucort

  Flesselles

  Rainneville

  Sealvillers

  Albert S

  He was soon to include yet another village, a name which was to become synonymous with living hell: Pozieres.

  Colonel Carl Jess, commander of the 7th Battalion (2nd Brigade), informed his men that they would soon be in ‘a hot spot’.11 To assist the artillery to identify Australians in the upcoming attack, each man stitched a piece of pink cloth to the back of his tunic. The target of their interest was soon revealed: the village of Pozieres.

  Pozieres was perched on the crest of a hillside astride the main road between Albert and Bapaume, protecting the German-held village of Thiepval and critical to Allied success on the Somme. All along the Western Front, the German troops commanded the high ground, building massive concrete bunkhouses and observation posts from which Allied movements could be easily monitored; it was up these slopes that Allied troops must now advance. From Pozieres along the ridge to Thiepval in the north and Guillemont in the south, the enemy had a commanding view of the Allies to the west. The magnitude of the battle for this crucial German stronghold had shattered the once quiet village of Pozieres. It was littered with broken tree stumps and surrounded by German wire defences on which the bodies of English soldiers had remained tangled since their attempts to capture the village at the opening of the Somme battles on 1 July.12 It was here that the 1st Australian Division was to create its own legend, albeit a bloody and bitter one.

  The 1st Division marched through the town of Albert, past the shelled basilica of Notre Dame de Brebières, and beneath the symbolic golden statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus which once stood on a tower high above. Having been struck by shellfire, the statue now hung precariously on an angle, secured from falling by Allied engineers. The Australians called her Fanny Durack after the 1912 Australian Olympic swimmer and gold medallist. The men fighting on the Somme had heard the legend that the fall of the statue would mark the end of the war. Sadly, when it finally fell in early 1918, struck by British artillery following the Germans advance on the town, the prophecy was not fulfilled; the war would continue for another eight long months.

  As darkness fell on the night of 22 July, George’s 2nd Brigade was positioned in the
reserve area of Sausage Valley to the south-west of the ruined village of Pozieres.

  Enemy shells and shrapnel burst around the men as their fellow brigades moved forward into front-line positions. Their task was to take Pozieres Trench which protected the southern approach to the village. In a leapfrogging action, the battalions were then to move on and reach the main Bapaume-Albert road running through the centre. Simultaneously, to the south-east, British divisions would attack towards Guillemont. A massive artillery bombardment commenced and was visible from over 30 kilometres away. The German reply was equal in intensity and laced with phosgene and tear gas.

  Soon after midnight, the 1st and 3rd brigades advanced on the ring of enemy trenches which surrounded the pulverised remains of Pozieres. The artillery barrage had achieved its objective. The shell-shocked Germans were quickly overrun and the Australians rushed through the trench into the remains of the village, where shattered homes had been further reduced to rubble. The Australians held the village throughout the day, fighting off enemy attempts to reclaim the ground they had lost. As the sun rose on 23 July the Australians reached the centre of the village following some of the most courageous fighting yet on the Western Front. In capturing the village, the Australians had created a salient which projected into enemy territory. German infantry and artillery could now enfilade their position from three sides. Later the following day, the men of the 2nd Brigade moved forward from their reserve position. George, part of the 2nd Light Trench Mortar Battery responsible for firing the Stokes mortar, pushed forward into the haze of smoke and dust.