WWI photos reveal life on the French frontline for 25th Battalion’s Victor Clarence Dempsey
As reports reached home of more than 360 Australian casualties at Pozieres in battles on the night of July 28, 1916, a young grocer at Bundaberg had another debate with his mother.
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As reports reached home of more than 360 Australian casualties at Pozieres in battles on the night of July 28, 1916, a young grocer at Bundaberg had another debate with his mother.
Victor Clarence Dempsey, eldest brother to four sisters, told his mother Bertha he
was in “line for a white feather” if he didn’t enlist.
Bertha insisted Victor’s family responsibilities eliminated him from military service.
Another attack at Pozieres on August 4 brought Western Front casualties for the 25th Battalion
to 785, from a full service battalion of 1023 men.
In two weeks after an assault on Pozieres on July 23, 1916, Australian troops lost more than 5000 men fighting Germans in northern France and Belgium.
Dempsey, 24, then ignored his mother to enlist on September 12, 1916, along with Bundaberg farmer George Burnett Kendall, 22, and farrier Reginald James Stringer, 19, sailing from Brisbane on October 27 with the 25th Battalion’s 17 and 18 Reinforcements.
The 25th Battalion was raised at Enoggera, Queensland, in March 1915 and mainly comprised Queensland recruits, with a small contingent from Darwin. It sailed in July 1915 to train in Egypt until sent to Gallipoli in early September. After a comparatively quiet time on the peninsula, the 25th returned to Egypt in December.
After further training, the 25th was the first Australian battalion sent to France, landing on March 19, 1916. Fighting with the 2nd Division, its first major battle began at Pozieres on July 25, continuing until August 7 with 785 casualties.
A spell in a “quieter” sector around Ypres on the Belgian front ended in October, when the 25th joined two Somme attacks east of Flers, which floundered in mud, then joined attacks in November to extend observation of the Albert — Bapaume Road.
On his arrival Dempsey, who at 160cm tall could “run like a bullet” according to his daughter Lorraine Siggs, was recruited as a signalman because he could quickly run messages around the
front lines.
Dempsey collected photos and postcards from Cape Town on his way to Europe, adding cards from Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, near where he was billeted at Marchienne-au-Pont, Le Havre and Ypres ruins. Siggs recalls her father referred to Germans as “Fritz”, and described them as “gentlemanly fighters”, even when held as prisoners of war.
Dempsey, who had kept pigeons at home in Queensland, was later put in charge of carrier pigeons and gave each bird a name. In one letter, he noted “Fritzie got Daisy last night, she didn’t make it home.”
A postcard portrait sent to his girlfriend Lou in March 1917 noted “Too much thinking of you. I hope you are well, With love Vic.”
Dempey’s anecdotes of trench warfare included sometimes eating maggot-infested bully-beef “because no one knew when the next serve of meat would arrive”.
Cigarettes were communal property: “You might only have one smoke but we shared it among all of us, because you never knew if you were going to get another one.”
Dempsey also confessed to taking one thing, explaining “My boots had no soles left, so when I found this German body in the trench with near new boots, I crossed myself and said I’m really sorry Fritz but I need to take your boots.”
After spending Christmas Day fraternising and singing carols with the enemy, Dempsey recounted that on Boxing Day both sides fired shots only into the air.
“He found it so sad,” Siggs says. “He’d see photos fall out of dead Germans’ pockets of their mothers and sisters, wives and children. He said they could have been your little brother.”
Gassed on the front line, Dempsey was sent to hospital in England several times, where some Australian soldiers were treated at Bishop Knoll Hospital, Bristol, in beds lined up in a peacetime ballroom.
Although rotated every eight days, in 1680 days of service frontline troops spent about 374 days training and another 423 on administration and logistics.
Rest and recreation took up about 150 days in more than four years, when Dempsey was billeted with the Moos family at Marchienne-au-Pont. Learning to speak and write French, he corresponded until the mid-1920s with daughter Lucy, about 12 during his stay.
Dempsey returned to Australia in May 1919 and settled at Daceyville, where he died in 1973.
Asked by a young grandson what was it like to be a wartime soldier, Siggs recalls Dempsey holding her son close.
With tears running down his face, Dempsey replied, “I hope you never have to find out, my little boy.”
Originally published as WWI photos reveal life on the French frontline for 25th Battalion’s Victor Clarence Dempsey
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