William Henry Graham Parker grew up and worked as a farm labourer in the Cowra area of NSW, namely on the family property ‘Parkerville’.  Aged 20, he enlisted in the AIF on 2 May 1916 at Cootamundra (No 2722); then went on to the Goulburn depot and into the 6th Reinforcements for the 56th Bn.  After first going to England for further training in November 1916, Bill arrived in France on New Year’s Day 1917.  Shortly after, he was taken into the 56th Battalion in the field and allotted to A Company.  Bill’s service record does not tell us much about his movements. He was sick with mumps in December 1916, was wounded by shrapnel in the heel near Bullecourt in May 1917 and was out of action for less than two weeks.  He had a fortnights leave in the UK in mid 1918 and returned to Australia in September 1919.  But such a sparse record indicates a man who was likely present for duty for unusually long periods.  As far as the records show, Bill was relatively lucky to be wounded only once and was rarely sick.  He must have been made of strong stuff and was probably with the unit in the front line for nearly all their major and minor engagements.  The family’s impression is certainly that he saw more than his fair share of action.
 
After the war Bill returned to Cowra and briefly to the family farm.  He apparently secured a soldier settler block but gave that to his mother after his father died.  He then moved to Cootamundra some time during early to mid 1920s and got a job with the New South Wales State Railways (c. 1924), and was foreman of a railway maintenance gang.  He was thus employed for the next 32 years. But Bill was always a farmer at heart, and often had other work on the side, or other business interests in farming. He married Ellen Keogh circa 1925, a woman he’d known for a while as she was from a property adjoining ‘Parkerville’ at Cowra. Bill and Ellen had three daughters, Doreen (b 1926), followed Myra and Joy. The family moved to Narromine in 1932 and there they had a house with a few acres.  Bill named the house ‘Estrées’, no doubt a reference to the 56th Battalion’s last engagement of the war, and memorable because he had survived.

Bill never smoked and almost never drank, apparently even during the war.  He was an excellent provider for his family; even through the worst Depression years they always had sufficient money, and Bill always held his railway job plus his additional farming interests.  People would say his kids were the best dressed in town.  They ate very well because of Bill’s steady income, but also because he was a genuine ‘green thumb’, so there were always good supplies of fruits and vegetables on hand.

He didn’t talk a great deal about the war, but when he did it was always in modest and matter of fact terms.  His old ankle wound didn’t trouble him, and he was fortunate to have escaped gassing, which was particularly bad at Passchendaele and Villers-Bretonneux.  Bill kept the shrapnel extracted from his heel on a fob chain which he wore all the time (see photo below).  He usually attended battalion reunions, and would get together occasionally with old digger mates.  He attended Anzac Day services usually in Narromine, but often went to Sydney as well. His son-in-law told of a time when together they visited Sydney Grammar School.  Bill stared at the memorial roll on the wall for a while and when they were about to leave, turned and gave a heartfelt and emotional salute.  His old commanding officer, Humphrey Scott who been killed at Passchendaele was named on that school honour roll.

Later in life (circa mid 1940s), while still working for the Railways, Bill was elected to the Narromine Town Council.  He ran for Mayor once, but was unsuccessful – apparently being undone by some political underhandedness.  He did however become Deputy Mayor and held that office for quite a long time. 
 
Fate can be fickle and sometimes cruel.  For a man who had ‘gone over the top’ so many times on the Western Front, one might think a man led a charmed life.  But luck doesn’t last forever. Bill was tragically killed in a work accident on 30 May 1956 when he was hit by a train.  A very well respected man in Narromine and district, his death saw the whole town turn out for the funeral.

Lest we forget.

(Photos and background information courtesy of Doreen Austin – nee Parker).

AWM Souvenirs Collection – Menus, 13/4/12.

Last week I happened to find a menu from a special dinner held by the 56th Battalion in France among the Souvenirs Collection at the Australian War Memorial’s Research Centre.

On the evening of 11 June 1918 the 56th’s CO, Lieutenant Colonel Cameron, hosted a dinner at the battalion officers’ mess at Bussy-les-Daours.  Brigadier Stewart was the guest of honour and the COs of other units in the brigade also attended.  The menu includes signatures of all the officers who attended, as well as a list of songs played by the 14th Brigade Band.  The following includes my probably imperfect understanding of what the dishes were.  I wonder what the other ranks had for dinner that night…

• Potage petits pois – Pea soup
• Saumon sur pain grille – Salmon on grilled bread
• Pate de pommes de terre – Potato pate – potato slices and crème fraîche, which are baked in the oven until the dish is covered with a golden-brown crust looking like a pie
• Poulet roti aux pois verts – Roast chicken with green peas
• Rosbif Anglais – Pommes de terre rotis – English roast beef with roast potatoes
• Choux – either a sauce or a pastry i.e. for profiteroles?
• Poudin aux dates – Date pudding?
• Peche aux Riz – Peaches and rice
• Frais a la crème ou Vin Rouge – Fresh cream and red wine
• Welsh Rarebit. Welsh Rarebit is commonly melted cheese on toast, and often including mustard,pepper or Worcestershire sauce.
• Coffee, port and liqueurs

More signatures and tunes played by the brigade band.

After nearly two months holding the vital ground near Villers-Bretonneux, in June 1918 the 5th Australian Division was finally moved into reserve for a fortnight’s well-earned rest.  The 14th Brigade was stationed around Querrieu, about 12 km behind the front, with the 56th Battalion camped at Bussy-les-Daours, on L’Hallue Canal. The short time spent in the rustic surroundings of the nearby wood with a multitude of wild flowers and a stream running through it was fondly remembered by all.  

Idyllic scenery around Bussy-les-Daours in mid 1918

John Charles Watt (photo courtesy of his grandson John C. Watt).

One of the more important figures in the 56th’s history was a remarkable and brave young man named John Charles Watt.  Previously this post called for assistance in finding a photo of him and showed a blank silhouette of a man with a question mark on his face.  Happily, thanks to the assistant of a couple of readers of this blog (see comments below), contact was soon made with the Watt family and the photo shown at left made available.

John was born on 28 September 1896 at Stewart’s Brook near Scone, NSW, son of John Howard Watt and Eliza Jane Watt.  He later attended high school in Newcastle where he also completed four years of compulsory military service. At some stage the family (at least John Jr. and his mother) moved north to Emmaville, a tiny settlement in a tin mining area about 30 km north of Glen Innes.  There John became a miner.

When war broke out in 1914, John was not quite 18, but it wasn’t long before he enlisted in the AIF in Sydney the following July.  His father had recently died in Port Augusta, SA in March 1915.  At the time he enlisted, John stood 5’ 10” tall, weighed 156 pounds (71 kg), and had brown eyes and dark hair. His religion was Church of England. He was initially allotted to the 10th Reinforcement of 4th Battalion and embarked for service overseas in October, joining his unit in Egypt on 21 January 1916. Almost straight away he began his rise through the ranks, making lance corporal on 2 February. 

A fortnight later Watt was transferred to the newly raised 56th Battalion, where he was soon promoted again, to corporal on 4 March, then sergeant by the end of May. After enduring the heat, flies, hard work and boredom of Egypt, he went with the 56th Battalion to France in June 1916.  The following month he was wounded in the elbow and won the Distinguished Conduct Medal in his first battle – Fromelles.  The recommendation for the award reads:

‘For conspicuous gallantry during operations. When engaged with his company constructing a communication trench, he went forward to the assistance of some men in the occupied enemy trenches, and helped them to hold off the enemy’s bombers. When hit himself by a bomb, he rushed out, killed the bomber, and brought back his rifle.’

After several weeks recovering from this wound he rejoined his unit in September.  Known as a particularly daring patrol leader, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 25 November 1916, but strangely his service record does not record his attendance at an officer training college. Nevertheless on 6 March 1917 he was again promoted to lieutenant.  In his next battle, at Louverval on 2 April 1917, John was again wounded (this time in both legs) and won another award for his actions that day.  The recommendation for his Military Cross reads:

‘[Watt] displayed conspicuous bravery and reorganised his disorganised company after its commander became a casualty.  Despite heavy shelling, regardless of all danger he moved about cheering the men up and inspiring their confidence.  He was largely responsible for holding the left top edge of the wood.  He also led an attack to eject a party of Germans who had infiltrated the wood.  His conduct was exemplary.  He worked tirelessly for 20 hours straight until badly wounded.

John’s recovery from his latest wounds took longer; while convalescing in England, he missed the battalion’s next two battles of 1917 – Bullecourt and Polygon Wood.   During his extended period in the UK however, John met and married an English girl, Daisy Taylor in September 1917.  At the time, Daisy was living in Westminster, London, just across the park from Buckingham Palace, no less.  Finally, having regained the strength in his legs (from the wound of course), he rejoined the battalion in early November 1917 and saw out the battalion’s stint in the Ypres-Passchendaele sector, before they moved first to the Samer rest area, then back to the Hollebeke sector of the front into the New Year, 1918.  In early March, John enjoyed two weeks leave in the UK, no doubt spent with Daisy. 

After his leave, John’s next taste of action was on the night of 24/25 April 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux.  Here, he was one of those selected to guide ‘Pompey’ Elliott’s 15th Brigade on to their objective during this famous Australian counterattack. Immediately after this action, he was again wounded in the leg and gassed.  This was now his third wound, and on top of that, in June he also suffered a bout of influenza which hampered his recovery. 

According to the memoir of another 56th man, John was nicknamed ‘Butcher’ in the battalion, but for what reason we do not know.  There are no indications that he was particularly ruthless with either his own men, or the enemy, and it seemed he was one of the most admired and well-liked men in the unit. Several accounts noted Watt’s ‘reckless bravery’ in battle, or that he was just about the best soldier in the battalion.

Watt again recovered from his latest leg wound and the effects of gassing and flu, to rejoin the 56th at the very end of August, the day before the battalion became involved in their next large battle – Peronne.  For once, John wasn’t wounded in this scrap.  After the battalion’s final battle at the Hindenburg Line in early October, he went to Fourth Army School for a month, then to the Flying Corps in UK, but by early December, he had returned to the 56th. Back in the UK, he was then demobilised in May 1919, and discharged in July.

At some stage John probably moved to Bradford as his service dossier records Daisy’s change of address to that city, probably in mid 1918.  It then seems Daisy may have died there around early to mid 1920, as death records seem to indicate.  John then re-married in the latter half of 1921, to a Mabel Blanche Lugg in Poole, Dorest.  The couple had a son, John Charles Watt Jr., who was born in December the following year. In May 1923 John, Mabel and their baby son travelled to Australia aboard the SS Borda .  With the family settling in Sydney, John rejoined the peacetime army as a lieutenant the following year and the couple soon had a second son, named Alan.  At the end of 1927 John was placed on the retired list, but with the outbreak of the Second World War, he was reinstated as a reserve officer in Australia in 1940, initially with the amalgamated 20/19th Battalion. With that war entering its final stages, he was once more removed from the retired list in July 1945, as he approached the age of 50.

At some stage John and family settled at Kogarah, and were there at least through much of the 1940s and into the early 1950s.  Sadly, John died of cancer in 1955 in the Parramatta District.

There is one tantalizing hint of the existence of a photo of John Watt.  In a letter written in 1976, a former comrade, Corporal Nicholas Brain, refers to still having several photos, including one of Lieutenant Watt.  I have made contact with the Brain family, but so far no such photo has been discovered.  Appeals for help in finding a photo of Watt have also been lodged with local libraries, museums and historical societies in the Emmaville, Glen Innes and Kogarah area.

Please let us know if anyone comes up with any leads that may find us a photo of him.

Many thanks,

Craig

Update (29 Oct 2009): Contact has just now been made with the Watt family who should be able to provide a photo.  See comments below.

John Bermingham, pre-war, 1900 (Courtesy Darren Bermingham)

Born in Young in 1879, John Bermingham grew up in the peaceful surroundings of country New South Wales.  He soon showed a strong aptitude for working with machines, and eventually gained considerable expertise and employment in the field of mechanical engineering. With wife Sarah, daughters Annie and Edith, and sons Martin and Harry, the family settled in Narromine before the war.

Perhaps feeling that family duties outweighed those of King and Empire, John resisted the notion of joining up when war broke out in August 1914. Yet like so many others following the failure of the Gallipoli campaign and the resulting heavy losses, by early 1916 he had made his mind up to go and ‘do his bit’. Travelling to Cootamundra, the 36-year-old Bermingham enlisted in the AIF in March 1916 (No. 2128), and was allotted to the 4th Reinforcements for the 56th Battalion. By the end of April he was learning the routine and drill at the recruit training depot at Goulburn. The 4th Reinforcements, numbering around 150 men, left Sydney in early September aboard HMAT A15 Port Sydney. They arrived in the UK at the end of October and were immediately sent for a stint with the 14th Training Battalion at Hurdcott near Salisbury.

John in uniform, winter 1916.

Bermingham finally joined the 56th Battalion in France as a private, just prior to Christmas 1916 as one of the coldest winters in memory set in. Put into C Company, he apparently was present for all the battalion’s major battles during 1917, including Louverval (April), Bullecourt (May) and Polygon Wood (September). It was at Bullecourt on 15 May that John was wounded in the face by shrapnel and badly concussed during the intense German bombardment. Yet he recovered quickly, rejoining the battalion a week later.

After surviving the terrible conditions in the mud at Passchendaele, Bermingham went into a rest camp late in the year and soon afterwards received some much-needed treatment on his dentures. Then in January 1918 he suffered a bout of stomatitis; a painful inflammation of the mouth or gums often caused by poor dental hygiene. Following his recovery, John’s medical problems were then compounded by terrible knee pain that set in around April. A court of inquiry found that he was he suffering from chronic synovitis and there was no suspicion of self injury.  This was routine, since malingering was rife during the war and soldiers were very inventive in creating self-inflicted conditions to get themselves away from the front.  But John had had problems with his legs ever since they had both been broken a few years before the war and the court was satisfied there was nothing suspect in this case.

Perhaps due to warmer weather in the summer and benefiting from a prolonged rest, John eventually recovered from his knee troubles, and remarkably, was well enough to rejoin the battalion by the end of August. Days later, on 2 September, the 56th Battalion went into action at Peronne, one of their biggest and last battles of the war. During the successful attack on this key town on the Somme, the battalion suffered heavy casualties, including almost fifty dead. One of those killed was John Bermingham. While no official account of what happened has survived, John’s son Martin apparently heard from one of his father’s comrades after the war. This man, an eye-witness it seemed, said that Bermingham had initially been wounded in the leg by a shell. Unfortunately as his comrades were then carrying him to safety, he was shot through the head by a sniper and killed outright.

Today John Bermingham rests in peace at Peronne Communal Cemetery Extension.  Of course he is also commemorated on the Australian War Memorial’s Roll of Honour.  Lest we forget.

2128 Private J Bermingham. 56th Bn Australian Inf. 2 September 1918.

* Many thanks to John’s great-grandson, Darren Bermingham for providing additional information and the photographs.

Birthplace of the 56th: Tel el Kebir camp between Cairo and the Suez Canal in early 1916 (AWM photo C00207).

Sorry I’ve been a bit of a slack blogger – as you might have noticed I haven’t made a post since March. I guess I’ve just been devoting all my spare time to the book and have kept pushing the blog to a lower priority.  Anyway, I thought I’d better provide a quick update on where we’re up to with the book.  As I can see from the blog stats there are quite a number of people who check it out.  I’m always happy to see and hear of the number of people interested in our project.

Over the past few months I’ve been concentrating on 1917 (a very eventful year) and have now finished writing the chapters on that whole year.  The major battles were Louverval, Bullecourt, and the biggest was Polygon Wood.  It literally took me months to properly research and write this, their biggest battle, in the sort of detail I wanted to. Since then I’ve moved into researching and writing about the first few months of 1918 and am now writing about the German spring offensive of March.  Meanwhile, Nick has been beavering away on the earlier period; i.e. 1916 and the Egypt days. He is currently writing about Fromelles, the battalion’s first big battle.

So, we’ve been working very hard on the book over the past several months, getting done what we can in our minimal spare time.  Both Nick and I have pretty demanding jobs at the AWM, so sometimes it’s a little difficult to find the time (not to mention the energy) to power on.  Still, we both love working on the project and are still aiming to finish writing by the end of the year.  I don’t know how long the editing and production process will then take, but we would hope it would be ready for release sometime next year. 

In other developments:

We’ve recently launched a bit of an advertising campaign through NSW historical societies and newspapers.  This Sunday we’ll have an advert in The Sunday Telegraph.  Basically, we’re still on the lookout for people who might have personal letters, diaries, postcards or photos of men of the 56th.  Already we’ve had quite a few people contact us.

Work on the nominal roll continues and is close to completion.  We’re really confident that we have an exceptionally thorough list of men who served with the battalion, however briefly their stay might have been.  We’ve now reached 3,500 names.

The collection of photos of the men continues to grow – we now know what almost 200 of the men looked like.

We’re still looking for papers from key figures (i.e. the more senior officers) in the battalion.  While we have photos of many of them, try as we might, we still have no personal papers from any of the COs; Humphrey Scott, Adam Simpson, Frederick Oatley, Henry Cameron, Austin Holland or Norman Marshall.  We’d also love to find something from other key officers like Majors Lucas and Roberts, and Captains Fanning, Anderson, Mann and Plomley.  Oh well, we do what we can and we may yet get lucky on this front…

Anyway, enough blogging for now – I’ll try to not let it go so long before my next post…

Again, many thanks to all who take an interest in the 56th Battalion, and our history project. 

Cheers,

Craig.

Mackenzie Macdonald was born in Carnoustie (near Dundee), in Forfarshire, Scotland.  At some stage he migrated to Australia and by 1914 was working as a labourer on a property named ‘Runnymede’, near Stockinbingal, NSW.  When war broke out, Mack as he was commonly known, enlisted on 29 August 1914 in Sydney.  He was 28 years old, with a strongly built 5’ 9” tall, 13 stone frame.

An original member of 4th Battalion, he was a private in E Company and would likely have felt quite at home, given the high proportion of Scotsmen in that battalion.  He was promoted Lance Corporal just prior to the Gallipoli landing, and to Corporal the day after, no doubt due to high losses.  Mack’s luck held out and he survived, later taking part in the attack at Lone Pine in early August.  During his time on the peninsula, his efforts did not go unnoticed;

‘[He] performed many acts of bravery at the Landing and also at Lone Pine, where he did excellent bombing work … [and] worked extremely hard, not only in defence construction but also at patrol work.  He was at all times cheerful, and was thus largely instrumental in keeping up the men’s spirits.  Just after the Lone Pine engagement, Private Macdonald went out into no-man’s-land and helped to obtain identification discs and bury the dead, the whole time under very heavy machine gun and rifle fire…’

Mack fell ill in late September and was evacuated to Mudros.  He was later sent to hospital in England for treatment, apparently also suffering from a hernia. 

Upon his recovery early in the new year (1916) he was first placed on the 4th Battalion’s supernumerary list of NCOs, then with the creation of the 56th Battalion in February, Mack transferred to that unit in April.  With his new battalion he went to France shortly afterwards and was soon made sergeant. 

In the 56th’s first action at Fromelles on 19-20 July, Macdonald ‘displayed splendid courage and coolness’ under fire.  No doubt his experience being under pressure and heavy fire at Gallipoli would have helped steady the nerves of the men experiencing their very first action.  After Fromelles, Mack spent the month of August attending the General School of Instruction, then a six-week course at the infantry school of instruction in November and December.  He had clearly been identified as a leader and was earmarked as a future officer for the battalion.

According to records he was with the battalion for the fighting at Louverval and Bullecourt in April and May 1917.  Then with the battalion going in to an extended period of rest and training, came a good opportunity to send up-and-comers for further training.  Along with many other prospective officers, Mack attended Officer Training School at Pembroke College, in Cambridge (UK) from June to September 1917 after which he emerged, commissioned a second lieutenant.

But Mack’s career as an officer was not destined to progress in the field of battle. Plagued by chronic knee trouble (Synovitis) which had been troubling him since early 1917, his war ended early; he was returned home to Australia in March 1918 and his appointment terminated.  And so the AIF and the 56th Battalion lost a promising junior officer they might have had for their biggest battles at Polygon Wood and those throughout 1918.

For his services, Mack did not go unrewarded.  He was mentioned in Sir Douglas Haig’s Despatch of 7 November 1917, and was also awarded the Italian Bronze Medal for Military Valour.  Apart from his deeds in action at the Gallipoli Landing, Lone Pine and Fromelles, his ‘devotion to duty’ in training men in the battalion was also noted.

Mack settled in Lithgow, New South Wales after the war where he remained until his death in 1966.

A page from the battalion's nominal roll book. Near the top it lists the Heinecke brothers, George and Herbert, both of whom were killed in 1917.

It’s been a while since my last post, but work is still progressing steadily with research and writing of the book.  Alongside that, we’ve also continued to build the battalion’s nominal roll.  We’re hoping to make it as complete as possible (within reason), by using a variety of sources.

These include source records held by the Australian War Memorial such as nominal rolls, embarkation rolls, the Roll of Honour and personal service records (held by National Archives).  Of great help in crunching the numbers more efficiently has been assistance provided by Professor Peter Dennis and his AIF database (see Links), which brings the aforementioned sources together into one searchable database.

A lot of manual work has also gone into compiling this roll, including simply checking if names are on it when they are found in a variety of documents.  We’re also lucky to have a battalion nominal roll book in the Memorial’s collection which covers most of the battalion’s existence from about mid 1916 through to late 1918 (see image above).  I’ve actually employed my two teenage kids to go through copies of this roll and double check against what’s on our working roll (an Excel spreadsheet at this stage).

So far we’ve got almost 3,500 names and are confident that we’ve captured over 95% of the men who served in the battalion.  We’re trying to include everyone, no matter how brief their stay in the battalion was, so it’s a lot of extra work.  The men who joined the battalion late from another unit, and left it before the end of the war are the most difficult to find.  There are bound to be a few of these types that fall through the cracks but with all the sources and cross-checking I’m confident we won’t miss many at all. 

I reckon my eyes have now been over every single man’s name, to the point where if I see a name in a document, I can often say, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen him on the roll” and move on.  I really need to get a life…

Villers-Brettoneux Military Cemetery

A few weeks ago, Nick and I visited the Western Front battlefields and had the opportunity to see the places where the 56th had fought.  We were part of a joint Australian War Memorial – Imperial War Museum tour; about ten Brits and a similar number of us Aussies.  If you saw the 4 Corners program that aired on 10 November you would have seen our tour featured on that.

While Nick has been several times before, for me it was my first visit to the Western Front.  It was truly wonderful to visit all the sites I’ve been studying and writing about for years.  First we hit London for a couple of days, before taking the ferry over from Dover to Calais.  It was a bit of a whirlwind tour, but boy did we ever pack a lot into those five days.  We were on the go from first thing in the morning until after dark every day.  We were so keen to see all these places and just explore as much as possible, that weariness was forgotten – that really hit hard after it was all over. We were also blessed with great weather and great company as the Brits were a good bunch.  We had many fun times discussing the battles over a pint or two…

Day one: Doullens, Bertangles (where Monash had his HQ and was knighted by the King in 1918), Corbie, Heilly, saw the Morlancourt Ridge, then back to Amiens where we were based in a hotel where Australian officers had billeted in 1918.

The AWM-IWM tour group at Bertangles

Day two: Adelaide Cemetery, Villers-Brettoneux, le Hamel, Peronne, Mont St Quentin, Riqueval, Bellicourt, Estrees and Montbrehain.

View from atop Mont St Quentin

Day three: Serre, the Sunken Lane (Lancashire Fusiliers), Hawthorn Redoubt, Montauban, Trones Wood, Mametz, Fricourt, Albert, Lochnagar Crater, Ulster Memorial, Beaumont Hamel, Y Ravine, High Wood and Delville Wood, Martinpuich, Flers and then Pozieres, (drove past Mouquet Farm) and finished up at Thiepval.

The sunken road on the Somme

Day four: Louverval (where I gave a talk on the 56th Bn), Noreuil, Bullecourt, Vimy Ridge, Fromelles (where we visited the site of the recently discovered bodies), then up to Ypres in the evening, just in time for the Last Post at Menin Gate.  Whew…

Me giving my talk on the 56th at Louverval

Day five: Ypres, Langemarck, St Julien (where Nick did his talk), Polygon Wood (where Lt Col Scott of the 56th is buried), Tyne Cot, Messines then back down into Ypres to visit the In Flanders Fields Museum.

Nick & I at Lt Col Scott's grave at Polygon Wood

After the tour wound up in Ypres, we travelled back across the Channel on the ferry to the UK again.  I then stayed in London for another five days visiting musuems etc, and The National Archives at Kew. 

While in France and Belgium we naturally visited most of the main Australian memorials and cemeteries where we were able to contemplate the scale of the losses, remember the diggers and pay our respects.  I also got a lot out of visiting these sites from the point of view of writing about the battles; i.e. to walk the ground, see the lay of the land, gauge heights and distances etc.  When I write about these places and battles now, I do so with much greater insight and greater confidence.

Pozieres Windmill site

Leopold William Meek was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand on 23 June 1893.  At some stage he and his family moved to Sydney, New South Wales, where in September 1912 he signed on with the Royal Australian Navy for seven years.  During part of this time he served on HMAS Australia.  Gaining a discharge in mid 1914, he apparently became a carpenter; something he’d probably had experience with during his time in the navy, as his service card records an injury from a circular saw.  In 1914, now 22 years old, he was residing in East Zetland, Sydney.  Upon the outbreak of war in August 1914, he immediately joined the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force, and took part in the seizure and occupation of German New Guinea between September and January 1915.

Upon his return to Australia, he re-enlisted in the AIF in Sydney on 10 February 1915. First allotted to the 4th Reinforcements for the 4th Battalion, he was somewhat ‘in the wars’ for much of the first half of the year, although of the medical kind, suffering from venereal disease, pneumonia and malaria.  He most likely contracted syphilis in Egypt prior to landing on Gallipoli, and this and his subsequent ailments constantly interrupted his time spent on the peninsula.

Upon the creation of the 5th Division in Egypt in early 1916, Meek transferred to this division’s 56th Battalion in February.  With the move to France and the Western Front, Meek saw front line action, being wounded badly in the eye at Fromelles in July 1916.  At the end of the year he went to England for a stint as an instructor at the 14th Training Battalion, training new reinforcements who would fill units such has his battalion. 

Whilst in the UK for nearly all of 1917, Meek kept busy; he was promoted to sergeant, presumably did a lot of sight-seeing in the UK, and then met and married one Ethel D’Anson, a Yorkshire lass that August.  To round off the year a court martial reduced him to the ranks as a private again, due to some fraudulent activities. In late October 1917 he rejoined his battalion in Flanders near Ypres.

During the battalion’s next big battle in April 1918 near Villers-Bretonneux, Meek was gassed.  After a long recovery, plus more disciplinary problems, he finally rejoined his unit in France again in on 8 November 1918.  Three days later the war ended.  Meek returned to Australia in August 1919.

In writing a history of the 56th Battalion, we feel blessed that at least one its members published his story, providing us with much valuable information and insights not found in the official papers.  Lieutenant Harold Williams is our saviour in this respect, as he produced two books in fact; The Gallant Company (1933) and Comrades of the Great Adventure (1935).  Both are well-written works being very informative and descriptive (particularly of people and landscapes), and not at all dull to read.  Early reviews of the books seemed very good.  5th Division commander, Lt. Gen. Sir John Joseph Talbot Hobbs in writing the foreword called it ‘the best soldier’s story I have yet read in Australia.’

From the two books we have learned quite a bit about Williams himself, but not enough.  We would very much like to find any of his descendants to learn more.  We know basically what he looked like, yet have no photo of him.  We know some of his thoughts through his books, but nothing more; nothing about his life after the war for example.  We know he kept letters and a diary, so what became of them? Surely they must have survived.  At the beginning of The Gallant Company, Williams noted:

‘On active service I kept a diary.  On my return to Australia many letters which I had written during the war came again into my possession.  From these resources I have compiled this story of war-time life in the Australian Imperial Force.’

From his books and various service records, the following is what we currently know about him:

Harold Roy Williams was born in 1889 in Cooma, NSW to parents Frederick and Mary.  By 1914 he was living in Croydon, Sydney and was working as a warehouseman.  He joined the AIF on 4 August 1915 as a 26 year old, originally part of the 5th reinforcement for 20th Battalion.  However in February 1916, before joining the 20th, he and many other reinforcements for that battalion were transferred to the newly raised 56th, then forming in Egypt.  Known to his mates as ‘Dick’, Williams was a Roman Catholic, stood 5′ 6″ tall, weighed 152 lbs (70 kgs), and had a dark complexion, with brown eyes and black hair.  He had enlisted with several mates, namely Jimmy Sowter, Harry Lucas and Fred Fyall, all of whom went with him to the 56th.

He rose from private though the NCO ranks during 1916-17 and by December 1917 had gained his commission as a lieutenant.  He was away from the front for long periods in 1917 on leave, and later attending various courses including officer training back in England. He returned to the field in January 1918, undertook further specialist training and was appointed gas officer.  Ironically, not long after, he was put out of action for several weeks; being gassed in early April 1918.  He was again wounded in action at Peronne on 2 September 1918 and his recovery from this wound (to the buttock) saw out the remainder of the war.

He departed England in  January 1919, arriving home in February.  In 1935 The Gallant Company was published and two years later the follow-up/supplementary volume, Comrades of the Great Adventure. 

Williams died on 13 May 1955.