Seventeen: a brief moment in a colossal battle
An incredible photograph shows a brief moment in the midst of a colossal, industrial-scale battle.
On August 8, 1918, the British Army launched an attack by four corps across a front of 16 kilometres, to the east of the important rail junction at Amiens in France. The infantry advance, spearheaded by the Australian and Canadian Corps, was supported by artillery fire from more than 2000 guns, and more than 1000 aircraft. This was the largest tank assault of the war, with every machine available to the British taking part. And it was successful—at the end of the day, the line had been pushed forward as much as 13km.
In the midst of all of this weaponry, noise and movement, this platoon of B Company, 29th Australian Infantry Battalion, operated as part of the second wave of the advance. These 17 men had moved into position shortly after midnight. At 3.30am they had been issued a rum ration, and were reportedly in “excellent spirits and anxious for [the] order to push on”, as the immense wall of noise and smoke of the artillery barrage began in front of them. At 5.35am they had moved forward in heavy fog, managing to keep in touch with each other and the platoons around them, despite being able to see only 15 metres in any direction. At 7.30am they arrived in this shallow valley near the village of Warfusée-Abancourt, about an hour after it had been captured by the first wave of the attack. They would leave this valley at 8.40am, and reach their objective a little under two hours later.
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An official Australian war photographer, possibly Hubert Wilkins, took this photograph as Lieutenant Rupert Frederick Arding Downes (17) briefed his men. The lifting fog still lies in the background, and the men are carrying everything they need to advance. It is a remarkable record of a brief moment in the midst of a colossal, industrial-scale battle.
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In the late 1990s, the manager of a private history museum in the Blue Mountains of NSW, W.H. Connell, identified all 17 men in the picture. He used service records and family information to put together a series of notes about each man as far as possible. Twenty years later, advances in digitised archives have led to more information becoming available about these individuals than ever before. Of course, some still remain shrouded in mystery.
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The eighth man in line, Private Patrick O’Grady (8), was born in Galway, Ireland, and worked as a miller for the Falstaff Restaurant in Spencer Street, Melbourne. But after arriving back in Australia in early 1920, he disappears.
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The most easily identifiable man in the picture is, of course, the platoon’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Downes (17). He came from a prominent family of graziers in the Camden district of NSW. He had enlisted in September 1915, but remained in Australia to gain a commission. In April 1916 he married Katie May Maddrell at St James’s Church in Sydney. He went to war in November 1916; she went to England to wait for him. Downes proved an able soldier. Eleven days before this photograph was taken, he had led this group of men in action at Morlancourt, in a “very determined and skilful manner”. Taking his men forward to their final objective and beyond, he organised the destruction of an enemy strongpoint, and resisted a German counter-attack. The citation for the Military Cross he was later awarded read, “his personal contempt for danger inspired all under him”.
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Another man in the photograph was also decorated for his courage. Lance Corporal Louis Price (4) had enlisted in July 1915, aged 20, and had left Australia on the troopship Ascanius in November of that year. He survived the disastrous battle of Fromelles in July 1916, and next took part in battle at Polygon Wood in 1917. On September 26, 1917, then Private Price was serving as a runner. Telephone communications had broken down early on, and runners had become the only means of sending and receiving messages. Price carried messages through artillery barrages and machine-gun fire, and on at least two occasions through gas clouds. In fact, he became seriously affected by the gas, but refused to leave the line, and for the next four days he continued his vital work until the battalion was relieved. He was awarded the Military Medal for his devotion to duty.
Price returned to Australia in March 1919, and took up work on the railways. The following year he married Katie McDonagh, and they had a daughter. His life was not easy, however. His daughter died in 1921, followed by his wife in 1924. He married Alice Drew two years later and started a family. His eldest son, Louis junior, died in 1940 aged 12. Nevertheless, he had a long marriage to his second wife, and raised three more children. Price, one of the earliest to enlist of the men in this picture, was the longest-lived of all of them. He died in 1993 at the age of 98.
Two others in this picture enlisted in July 1915 and sailed to Europe on the same troopship as Price.
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Lance Corporal Alexander Bethuen Craven (7) was a labourer from Ballarat who had enlisted shortly before his 22nd birthday. He had been wounded in the right thigh and buttock by shellfire in October 1916, and although his wounds were labelled “slight” by standards of the day, he had taken nearly three months to recover in hospital in England. He had been wounded again in November 1917 but remained on duty. After the war he married Iris Cunningham in Victoria. Around 1940 he moved to Newcastle in NSW, and became a shopkeeper. Apart from a conviction for breaking Sunday trading hours in 1944, he lived a quiet life and died in 1960, aged 67.
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Private Frederick George Hall (16), was this platoon’s earliest enlistee, having beaten Alex Craven to the enlistment office by three days. He too had been wounded before, with a contusion to the back in November 1916 that flared up again the following year. His war was nearly over—the day after this photograph was taken he would be badly wounded in the hand he has resting on the shovel, and he was sent back to Australia the week after the Armistice.
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Worse was to befall the first man in the picture. Sergeant William Patrick O’Brien (1), was a schoolteacher from Ballarat and had enlisted in early 1916. His experience in the citizens’ militia, in which he held a commissioned rank, saw him transferred to the AIF’s instructional staff base in Australia. He worked there as staff sergeant major until October 1917, when he again volunteered to go overseas. He told friends that “he had been anxious to do his bit, and he was glad that he had the opportunity”. After taking their objective on August 8, the 29th Battalion pushed on to take ground near Vauvillers. After reaching their objective again, O’Brien was hit by a German shell and killed instantly. His body was recovered after the war and interred in Serre Road Cemetery No. 2. The cigarette case found with his body was returned to his father.
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Before the war’s end, two more of these men would be killed in action. On September 29, the 29th Battalion fought its last operation of the war in the major attack on the German defences of the Hindenburg Line. Private Charles Alfred Olive (3), casually slinging his Lewis gun over his shoulder in the picture, was again in charge of a Lewis gun. In the early hours of September 30, the platoon was held up by a German strongpoint and Olive opened fire on it, silencing the German guns within. As the stragglers retreated, Olive kept firing until he was struck in the chest by German machine-gun fire and killed. He was recommended to be mentioned in despatches for being “of great assistance to his battalion”. His body was never recovered.
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Nor was that of Private Jack Arlow (14), who was also killed in action on September 30. A blacksmith’s striker from Geelong, Arlow had contracted enteric fever shortly after arriving in England. During this time he met shopkeeper’s daughter Hilda Gale, and married her on December 20, 1916. He did not see her again until a few months before his death, when he was granted leave to the UK to meet his daughter, who had been born the year before. Hilda migrated to Australia after the war and raised her daughter not far from Jack’s home in Geelong. Others would be wounded in the fierce fighting that characterised the period between August 8 and September 30. Lance Corporal Thomas John Barrett Pope (13) was wounded on September 30, but was not repatriated to Australia for more than a year. Although he had only recently arrived in Australia from England before the war, he returned to Victoria, dying in 1972.
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Private Timothy Leyden (9) was gassed in late August and would suffer from the effects for the rest of his life. He had worked on the railways before the war, and despite persistent chest problems, returned to railway work. When he died in 1941, after a failed operation, his casket was draped with the Australian flag as “a tribute to one who had served his country well”. He was 49 when he died.
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The oldest man in the line was Private Edward Thomlinson (10). He had enlisted in August 1917, when standards had been lowered to allow men of his diminutive stature—he stood around 5 feet (1.5m) tall—to enlist. Born on September 13, 1874, he was 43 years and 10 months old when he enlisted, and has a service record full of illness and injury. His youngest brother also served in the AIF. At the time this photograph was taken, his brother, Private Albert Thomlinson, had less than three weeks to live. Edward returned to Australia, and little else is known of his fate. His wife remarried in 1938, indicating he probably died around 60 years of age.
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The youngest member of the platoon was Private Harry James Phillips (5). Born in 1899, he tried to enlist as soon as he turned 18 in 1917. He was initially turned down as unfit due to a hernia, but a month later, with a brand new scar from his hernia repair, he was accepted for active service. Three weeks after this photograph was taken he was badly wounded in the left foot, and returned to Australia. Despite ongoing problems with his foot, he lived to be 78 years old, dying in 1977.
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While some, like Phillips, were desperately keen to serve in the war, there is one man in this picture who appeared to regret his decision to enlist almost as soon as he had done so. Private Horace Joseph Buckley (6) enlisted in November 1915, but disappeared from camp, and was declared a deserter in Police Gazettes of March 1916. A year later, he re-enlisted and made it as far as Durban in South Africa, before deserting again. After about six weeks’ freedom he was caught and kept in a local prison. He still managed to absent himself a number of times before being placed on a troopship bound for England in November 1917. He continued to absent himself without leave, and was eventually sent to the front under escort. There can be no doubt he is in this photograph under duress—although it was duress he had brought onto himself by volunteering for service in the first place. He would be wounded the next day, suffering gunshot wounds to his left hand and face. Buckley’s sad story continued. He was treated for nervous debility in France in 1919, and after being sent to England before returning to Australia, he was caught begging in the streets. After his return he was repeatedly sent to the Lara Inebriates Retreat for problems with alcohol, and eventually took to checking himself in. Following years of problems with alcohol and homelessness, Buckley died in the state hospital in Lidcombe, NSW, at the age of 51. There was no next of kin to send his belongings to.
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Yet most of the men in this photograph seem to have coped with their life after the war. Private Herbert Davidson (11) enlisted on August 1, 1917 and had an exemplary service record. He was a married man with two children, the youngest of whom was only a few months old when he enlisted. Although he was not wounded, he did not enjoy good health in the post-war years and died in 1928.
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The Armistice did not signal the end of military duty for Temporary Corporal John Bird (15). In 1919 he volunteered for the Graves Registration Detachment, spending several months undertaking the grim task of recovering bodies from the battlefields and re-interring them in newly built cemeteries. After returning to Australia, he resumed work as a bricklayer. In 1925 he married Alice Murphy and raised a family, and died in 1945.
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Private James Cryer (2) had one or two problems complying with military discipline over the course of the war, but had few problems in returning to civilian life. He had come to Australia from Edenfield, near Manchester, England, in 1912 with a group of young single farmers, but ended up working in Sydney as a labourer. He married Edith Coombes in 1926, and lived in Darvell Street, Eastwood, for more than 40 years. In 1952 the couple spent several months in England, visiting James’s family. He died in Sydney in 1973.
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Private Horace John Towers (12), a farm labourer from Cootamundra, suffered perhaps the most poignant fate. He enlisted in November 1916, and had been wounded in the face and head during the attack on Polygon Wood in 1917. After medical treatment he returned to the 29th Battalion, and fought throughout 1918. In October, having been withdrawn from the front line, Horace Towers fell ill, and never recovered. On November 11, a day on which so many were celebrating the Armistice, Private Horace John Towers died of broncho-pneumonia in hospital in Abbeville, France.
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This iconic photograph contains a wide diversity of experience. These men included labourers, leather workers, schoolteachers, clerks, packers and farmers. They were young and old, married and single, sober and inebriate. One had contracted venereal disease already, another would contract it before going home. Three had been formally punished for bad behaviour, most had clean conduct sheets. They had been wounded in the legs, backs, buttocks and faces. They had lost brothers and friends. At least three would raise sons who served in the next world war. Downes’s son, Derick, was killed in the Middle East in 1942. Four would lose their lives in the war, four would live beyond their 80th birthday. Some suffered from injuries and illnesses as a result of their service, others registered no medical disabilities or problems. Most of these men, a minuscule but representative group of individuals in the midst of an immense, global war, would come home, find wives, marry and settle down. The photograph of these men, a single moment in time caught in the midst of warfare on an epic scale, perhaps captures the realities of Australia’s experience more than any other.
Dr Meleah Hampton is a historian with the Australian War Memorial. She is the author of Attack on the Somme: 1st Anzac Corps and the battle of Pozières Ridge, 1916, and The battle of Pozières: 1916.
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