In Memory of Thomas Henry Brown, 17th Battalion, AIF 5

Today marks a bit of a pilgrimage for me, supported so wonderfully by Adrienne, my marvelous wife, to pay my respects to someone I never met, and in some ways know little about, but who gave his life, at a very young age, in the service of his country in the “War to End All Wars”.

Exactly 100 years ago today, 3 May 1917, Lance Sergeant Thomas Henry Brown was killed fighting with the 17^th Battalion, Australian Infantry (AIF), on the first day of the “Second Battle of Bullecourt”, in France, during World War I.  And, thanks to technology which would never have been even wildly imagined in 1917, exactly 100 years later to the day, we stood in almost the very spot where his life ended so tragically.

A bit of background ….

Thomas Henry Brown was my first cousin, once removed – my father’s cousin – although he had died nearly 6 years (May 1917) before my Dad was even born (January 1923).  “Back in those days”, families were big and there were often many years between the oldest and the youngest children in a family. And so the age difference between cousins could often be much greater still.

So was the case in my grandmother’s family – Ida Gertrude Anderson (nee Masters) – and her sister – Alice Maud Brown (nee Masters) – Thomas’ mother.  Alice (born 1872) was 16 years older than my Gran (born 1888) and so her children were much older than Gran’s children – my father and his 2 sisters (although 1 died in infancy) and 4 brothers. In fact Gran was almost closer in age to her nephew Thomas, than her sister Alice !

How this all started ….

I have always had an “enthusiasm” for history.  I don’t think it would be correct to call it a “passion” as I have never really had the time to pursue it in that way.  But it is always a constant interest for me – just ask any of my family ! It was my favourite subject at school and though I have never been a great reader of books, a lot of the books I do read (beside cricket books – but that’s a whole blog story in itself for some “rainy day” in the future) relate to history. And I can’t think of too many tours we have had which didn’t take in a location or museum or the like, with some significant historical importance – at least in my realm of interests !

Many years ago, I developed an interest in our family history from information my Dad had obtained. And over the years with the advancement of technology and the spread of available information, details and records became known or traceable which had previously only likely been obtained from “family tales” or snippets of newspapers being passed from generation to generation.

My knowledge of our family in the First World War – “the Great War” – was pretty limited for a long time. I knew both my grandfathers had fought and, thankfully, returned home.  Over the years the information about their “adventure” grew, first from Dad’s records and then with my own research. However, it was generally not a subject which was talked about – many who had experienced the horrors of those years preferring to blot out the “memories” as much as possible.

My Dad’s father (Emerson Anderson) was a signaller in the 53rd Battalion and was awarded the Military Medal in July 1918 for his bravery in keeping communication lines intact during heavy fighting.

My Mum’s father (William Westley Jones) was a bit of a larrikin by all accounts – he was a stretcher bearer. His service records show he was docked a days pay for “riding a bicycle on the footpath contrary to orders”, later “admonished” for “gambling for money” but also suffered badly from Trench Fever. He was also in the 17th Battalion (6th Reinforcement) and I can’t help but wonder if he and Thomas knew each other for a time.

Mum’s step-father (Raymond Meredith Welfare) also served in the 9th Light Horse Regiment and was a Trumpeter. His service records indicate he was at Gallipoli between May and Sept 1915 and then served the rest of the war in North Africa (Moascar), being wounded there (shot in the thigh) in Oct 1917.

Dad had a bit of family history written in the “Family Bible” and as computer records expanded I transferred that information to my own computer records. There was also a book he obtained from elsewhere in the family which was a quite extensive research volume, mainly on my Grandmother’s side of the family. Over time, I have built on those sources myself.

From our 2011 tour ….

Starting the pilgrammage ….

Back a few years ago, we were planning a tour to Europe – which ultimately turned into a bit of a World War history tour (if you haven’t read that blog) – and would culminate with us attending the ANZAC Day ceremony at Villers Bretonneux in April 2011.  This became an opportunity for me to do a little research into those in my family who had fought in that part of France during WW I.

Ultimately, in addition to my grandfathers, my research for this actually found details of 7 young men in the family, 5 on Dad’s side of the family and 2 on Mum’s side, who gave the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War. Thomas is the “closest” relative of those who never came home. So I decided to see what I could find out further about Thomas and, if possible, pay our respects at his grave in France while we were there on the Western Front.

And during that 2011 Europe trip, we visited the graves of 4, including Thomas, and paid our respects for the other 3, at the Australian Memorial at Villers Bretonneux, as their remains have never been found/identified.

After that trip, I was spurred on to try and find more information if I could, when time permitted, and decided I would really like to be able to do something to mark the 100^th anniversary of his death, during the centenary celebrations of the Great War.

Quite an impact …..

If you have an interest in history, or if you have a relative who perished in either of the World Wars, or even if you don’t, I would highly recommend a visit to the battlefields of France.

As I have already noted, we attended the ANZAC Day ceremony at Villers Bretonneux in 2011. The ceremony is held at the Australian Memorial just outside the town of Villers Bretonneux which is situated in the Somme area, north of Paris. It is here that Australian soldiers “turned the tide” on German advances in April 1918, liberating the town and ultimately starting the retreat of enemy forces which would culminate in the end of the war 7 months later. And the school in the town (which was rebuilt using donations from school children in Victoria) has a very large sign in the playground with the inscription “Do Not Forget Australia”.

And in this part of France, there are numerous cemeteries dotted throughout the countryside, many seemingly “just popping up out of nowhere” – located beside or within vast tracts of farmland. All the cemeteries, not only in France but around the world, are maintained by the CWGC – Commonwealth War Graves Commission (based in the United Kingdom) who are tasked with commemorating the 1.7 million men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died in the two world wars. The cemeteries, burial plots and memorials are a lasting tribute to those who died and are located in some 154 countries across the world. And they do such a wonderful job of maintaining these memorials ! The lawns and gardens at each are immaculately cared for. We also visited one on our tour to Montecassino in Italy in 2013 which was in the same perfectly manicured condition. Visiting one of these is a very moving experience !

So much so, for me anyway, that some time after that 2011 tour, I felt that I wanted to “give something back” to Thomas in some way – and the many, many like him who tragically had their young lives cut short.

For many of them, they had set out on what they thought was “the adventure of a lifetime”. Today, many of us are so lucky to be able to enjoy so many “adventures of a lifetime” – fabulous holidays and tours, long and short – as part of our normal day-to-day lives. Many times during that 2011 tour, I walked through those cemeteries, along the rows and rows of headstones, reading the inscriptions on them sent by family such a long, long way away – a last connection with someone who had left and would never return home – “his duty done”, “our only son taken from us so far away from home”, “he gave his life for his family”, “For King and Country”.  And, engraved on a stone at the front of each cemetery, “Their Name Liveth For Evermore”.

If nothing else, I just wanted to show that in keeping with the line in the famous ode “We Will Remember Them” – we DO remember them – and visiting his resting place 100 years on would maintain a family connection from a “home” he would never see again, albeit from a distant family connection.

And therefore, with our 2017 tour planned so that we would again be in France on the 100th anniversary of his death, I started to try to delve a little deeper into the circumstances of his death. With the help of his military records obtained from the Australian War Memorial, I had been able to find details of where he was fighting when he was killed. Unfortunately, with the frantic chaos of battle, the information about exactly where and how he died is a bit sketchy.

In what must have been a terrible but common situation, the whereabouts of missing soldiers sometimes took years to establish. Even today, 100 years on, the remains of large numbers of missing soldiers are still being discovered, identified and re-buried. In the case of Thomas, accounts from his battalion buddies gave conflicting details of what happened to him. And at one stage after his family had received that awful letter advising of his death, his father received a letter from another soldier saying he had seen Thomas in hospital, wounded but alive. Unfortunately, this information was either out of date or a case of mistaken identity – and proved to be incorrect.

At the time of our first tour in 2011, from the records I had obtained, I really only had details of the date of his death, near Bullecourt France, and the location of his grave, not far away near a little town called Queant. And on that tour, we visited his grave in the Queant Road Cemetery.

Having visited his grave, our next little pilgrimage took place in 2014 when we visited Canberra.  As part of the centenary events for WWI, the Australian War Memorial has been projecting the names (on a rotational basis) of all 60,000 of those who sacrificed their lives during the war on the dome of the memorial.  So on a chilly night in September 2014, we stood on the forecourt waiting for his name to appear – and, with appropriate military precision, it did just that at the designated time of 8.02pm !

Thomas’s path to war ….

Thomas was born in October 1896 to Charles and Alice Brown. He was born in Bulahdelah – on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales – before the family moved to Sydney. They lived in French Street Kogarah, in Sydney, and at the time of enlisting he was working as a shop assistant. Unfortunately I know little else about him – I don’t even have a photograph of him. And, really, at this stage he was “just a kid” !

He enlisted on 1 September 1915, just 18 years and 11 months, service number 3457 in the 8th Reinforcements of the 17th Battalion at the Royal Agricultural Society Grounds (the old “Showground”) in Sydney. He embarked on 20 December 1915 on board HMAT A60 Aeneas, and after a short period in Cairo, embarked from Alexandria (Egypt) on 15 March 1916. At this point he had joined the rest of the 17th Battalion who had evacuated from Gallipoli in December 1915, and they all then arrived in Marseilles, France on 22 March 1916.

One of his first tastes of action would have likely been the 17th battalion’s involvement in the first battle at Pozieres between 25 July and 5 August 1916. The Australian official historian Charles Bean wrote that Pozières ridge “is more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth.” Thomas survived this battle but his service records show he was wounded on 28 July – “gun shot wound buttock”, returning to the battalion on 21 September 1916. The battalion then seems to have mainly had to deal with manning the front through the very bleak winter of 1916/17 – one of the worst for many years. For a while they were in a quieter section of the front in Belgium but then returned south. In November 1916 he was promoted from Private to Lance Corporal and then, in what was probably an indication of the increasing toll on life, on 19 April 1917 he was promoted twice during the day – to Corporal and then Lance Sergeant. This is probably after a battle around Lagnicourt where the Germans made a large counter attack against the Australian 12th and 17th battalions – the 17th suffering heavy casualties in the fighting and in pushing the enemy back .

Only two weeks later, 3 May 1917, the war would end for him, with his death at Bullecourt – aged just 20.

About Bullecourt ….

As I mentioned earlier, Thomas was killed on the first day of the Second Battle of Bullecourt. The “Battles of Bullecourt”, part of the overall Battle of Arras, were really a disaster from all accounts. The German army was entrenched in the formidable Hindenburg Line in and around Bullecourt.

The first Allied attack on 11 April was hastily planned and mounted and resulted in disaster. Tanks – the “great new weapon” – which were supposed to support the attacking Australian infantry either broke down or were quickly destroyed. Nevertheless, the infantry managed to break into the German defences. Due to uncertainty as to how far they had advanced, supporting artillery fire was withheld, and eventually the Australians were hemmed in and forced to retreat. The two brigades of the 4th Division that carried out the attack, the 4th and 12th, suffered over 3,300 casualties and 1,170 Australians were taken prisoner – the largest number captured in a single engagement during the war.

Then, as part of the final throes of the British Army’s “Arras offensive”, a renewed attempt was made to secure the fortified village of Bullecourt in the period 3-17 May. The Australian 2nd Division (5th and 6th Brigades) and the British 62nd Division attacked at 3.45 am( **) on 3 May 1917. The Australians penetrated the German line but met determined opposition which frustrated the envelopment plan. Drawing more and more forces in, renewed efforts on 7 May succeeded in linking British and Australian forces, but inspired a series of ferocious and costly German counter-attacks over the next week and a half. Following the repulse of the counter-attack of 15 May, the Germans withdrew from the remnants of the village.

While Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig considered its capture ‘among the great achievements of the war’, the village of Bullecourt which cost so many lives held no strategic value whatsoever. The actions were extremely costly – AIF casualties totalled 7,482 from three Australian Divisions – including Thomas Henry Brown.

And to echo the words of Charles Bean, Sergeant Walter Downing of the 57th Battalion AIF said, “Bullecourt represents for Australians a greater sum of sorrow and honour than any other place in the world”.

(**) All the war records seem to indicate the times as Greenwich Mean Time.  Some research has been done and based on the sunrise times, the “actual times” are 1 hour later allowing for the time zone difference.

Searching further ….

I have read a number of accounts or books relating to the Bullecourt battles. Thomas was part of the 17^th Battalion in the AIF 5^th Brigade (Australian 2^nd Division). From some of my research, I was able to find maps detailing rough locations of the battalion and the plan of attack.  In addition, searching the internet I came across further research, both formal and informal, which gave me a lot of help in establishing a plan for visiting the battlefield today.

Whilst my research has continued when time has allowed, for quite a while I had really turned up very little new information – just a few snippets which had allowed some fine tuning of my plans.

And then came my greatest success !

Whilst reviewing some of his burial information I noticed on a Burial Return for his cemetery a section that gave a “Map reference where body found” and a rather long obscure number – 51B.U.23.D.8.4

So now came the task of finding what this reference meant and deciphering it. (You will note his name above is listed as Pte. “J” H Brown – many of the old records I found – not just for Thomas- have numerous typing errors in them – you can see it in the entry above him as well. Certainly no “auto correct” in those days !).

After a bit of “Googling”, I found that once the war developed into the dour “trench battle”, as early as October 1914, the British Army adopted a grid system which was used to track the vast systems of trenches – from both sides – for their planning purposes. After some experimentation with trying to co-ordinate different map techniques between the British, French and Belgians, they eventually settled on the development of “1,000 yard squares”, which were then divided down to smaller areas so that at its smallest level they could map an area as small as 5 yards by 5 yards – which was about the size of a machine gun pit.

And that’s where these number were derived.

To break it down –

“51B” was the main map area. This map area was in a scale of roughly 1:40,000 yards

“U” was then the next reduced area contained within that main area. These reduced areas were 24 lettered squares labelled A to X within the main map.

“23” became a map representing the reduced area within area U. There were typically 30 smaller squares at this stage within the lettered squares (though in some cases 36).

Each numbered area was then divided into 4 smaller areas – A, B,C & D each an area of 50 yards by 50 yards

And finally this was reduced to co-ordinates 1 to 10 on each side, so that 2 of these co-ordinates on this grid would create an area just 5 yards square.

Armed with this information I set about trying to find some of these maps and hopefully track down the main map “51B”.  This turned out to be relatively simple and without too much difficulty I was able to drill down further and further to find the exact reference shown on the Burial Return.

And here you can follow these steps :

Good old “Google” gave me the start to search for “WW1 trench maps” and I came across a summary written by McMaster University in Ontario Canada which gave me the information above.

Then further information on that website narrowed things down to finding the main map 51B – covering the general area of Arras, France (circled below).

The next 2 stages were fairly easy to find – it was just a matter of drilling down into the main map and the website noted above had those detailed maps also. Then once I had the map area 23, I was able to add my own estimates of the location of the smaller areas D.8.4.

Here are those next 2 stages –

In my earlier research, I had come across a link to the website of an Irishman with a fascination for WWI who has built quite an extensive profile from his travels of the WW1 battlefields in general. He has spent 25 years wandering and documenting the battlefields and actually moved  to France in 2003 ! He had some excellent information regarding the Battles of Bullecourt and the Australians, including some maps of locations of the battalions involved in the battles. This one in particular clearly shows the 5th and 6th Brigades of the 2nd Australian Division and the movement of the individual battalions during the attack on 3 May 1917. Armed with the details above, I was able to use his map and I have circled Thomas’ 17th battalion and marked in black a rough path to where his body was found. (I will cover this a bit more later)

This was all well and good but these were still 90 odd year old trench maps so matching it to what was around today might be a different story.

So back to Google of course to search a bit more !  I then found a link to a website called “Doing our Bit, Mosman 2014-2018” which had various articles about those from the Mosman area in Sydney who had fought in the war. On that website someone had posted an article about how to find and read maps of the trenches and there was a link  to a fabulous site called the “Great War British Trench Map Coordinates Converter”.  Some brilliant person had developed a website which would take the old trench map co-ordinates – like that noted above – and convert them into the exact location on Google Maps – how good is that ! And here is the broad result for Thomas Henry Brown –

As you can see, the town of Bullecourt is off to the bottom left. The village in the top right is called Riencourt. The starting point for the attack in the morning had been off the map at the bottom – approximately along the line of the bottom road shown heading right from Bullecourt. (You can get an idea of the layout looking at the battle map above).

The shot below is zoomed in on the location above and the next shot is “street view” along the curved section of the D38 road.

As I indicated earlier, there is a lot I don’t know about Thomas Henry Brown and his untimely demise. Even the location of his body as noted on the Queant Road Burial Return raises more questions to some extent.

On the earlier map above showing the movements of the various battalions on 3 May 1917, my added black marking showing where Thomas started and where his body was found, as well as the map just below, probably doesn’t match up to accounts of the battle or evidence in his war record from others in his battalion as to what happened on that day.

As is evident from the maps, his body was found behind the German trench system (the red markings in the first map and black line in the map above). This is despite battle reports of the 17th battalion generally being forced to turn back – as shown by the green arrows in the Irishman’s map – as they were facing not only the German trenches in front, but also heavy machine gun fire from the “Balcony Trench” on the right. There are also reports that orders were given to withdraw due to the carnage. Some small groups and/or individuals did apparently join other battalions as the attack turned into chaos.

Some of the reports given by other soldiers in his battalion indicate that he was hit by machine gun fire about 15 minutes into the attack (around 5 am) and – wounded at this stage – was left in a shell hole for protection. So how he got where he did is anyone’s guess. I can only think that perhaps, being wounded, and in No Man’s Land, he was collected later by German stretcher bearers and taken to end up behind the German trenches. But his wounds were obviously severe and he did not survive. Then again, the burial return for the Queant Road Cemetery shows that all 7 on that particular list were found at the same location (or nearby) so they may all have been buried there in makeshift graves at some point as the battles shifted and/or the German line pushed back. There were many makeshift burials and after the war when these were found a lot of cemetery consolidation burials was undertaken. From his service records, it is quite possible that it was not until around late 1919 /early 1920 that his body was actually found and his was identified by his discs. In fact there is a letter on file dated 8 June 1920 returning his identity disc to his family – more than 3 years after his death.

What actually happened will probably never be known. However, unlike many of the dead, he was able to be identified from his disc and there is at least a marked resting place for him in the battlefields of France.

Today, as the sky brightened 100 years later, we retraced some of his rough steps – around the assembly point at the railway embankment, along the road to the “jump off” point for the battalion’s attack, in the direction of the attack toward the German trenches, to the approximate point where his body was found and of course to his resting place in Queant Road cemetery. The peaceful sounds of the birds greeting the new day here today would have been in stark contrast to the deafening sounds of artillery pounding and machine guns screaming 100 years ago.

The assembly point / the path ahead / shells still collected / Reincourt / remembered today

So there you have it ! A story 100 years in the making ! Who knows if there will be another part to the story in another 100 years !?

And “why ?” you may ask – well, I have wondered myself many times.  A connection to family perhaps or to piece together the missing parts in a puzzle or to indulge my enthusiasm for history  – it’s just something that grew on me. I can certainly feel for Tom’s parents – Charles and Alice – going back in time this 20 year old could have been my own.

I’ve enjoyed my part in this chapter anyway, on a “great adventure” with my darling Adrienne, and I’m honored to remember the part that Thomas Henry Brown played, in his “great adventure”, all those years ago.

It has always welled up emotion in me, and I’m sure it always will –

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”