Volunteers of Essendon and Flemington, 1914-1918

Botterill F C   Pte  4736    Frederick Charles    7 Inf Bn    35    Jockey    Single    C of E        

Address:    Kensington, Barnett St, 32    

Next of Kin:    Morgan, Miss, friend, 32 Barnett St, Kensington    

Enlisted:    9 Sep 1915        

Embarked:     A18 Wiltshire 7 Mar 1916            

Transferred to the 59th Inf Battalion.                  

Date of Death: 19/07/1916

Native of London, England.

V.C. CORNER AUSTRALIAN CEMETERY AND MEMORIAL, FROMELLES             

Private Frederick Charles Botterill

Rod Martin

His parents were dead.  He had no siblings.  London-born Frederick Botterill migrated to Australia on his own, probably around the turn of the twentieth century.  By 1915, he was thirty-five years old and his only real contact in the country was a lady friend named Miss Morgan, who lived at the same address as him: 32 Barnett Street, Kensington.

Frederick stated his occupation as ‘jockey’.  If he attempted to join up on the outbreak of war in August 1914, he was more than three centimetres too short.  By 9 September 1915, in response to the high casualties at Gallipoli and the promise of the prime minister to provide 50 000 more troops, the regulations had been liberalised and he now qualified for selection.  He was assigned to 15 Reinforcement of Pompey Elliott’s 7 Battalion and trained at Royal Park, Bendigo and Broadmeadows before departing for the Middle East on A18 HMAT Wiltshire on 7 March 1916.

Frederick arrived in Egypt some time in April 1916 and moved to the training base at Tel el Kebir.  The Australian forces were in the process of post-Gallipoli replenishment and expansion, with a number of new battalions being created.  On 20 May, Frederick was transferred to the newly-created 59 Battalion.  The Australian high command had decided to divide the already existing battalions in two, leaving one half of the now experienced men in the same battalion and supplementing them with new recruits.  The other half of the men would be assigned to a newly created battalion and also joined by new recruits.  Thus each battalion now had a mix of experienced and new soldiers.

Frederick trained with his new battalion in Egypt until mid-June.  Then, as part of 2 Anzac Corps (1 Anzac Corps had preceded them in March), the men sailed for Marseilles and the Western Front on the eighteenth of the month.  They travelled via Malta, and finally arrived in France on 29 June.  Soon after disembarking, they caught a train and headed north.  Their first stop was Steenbecque in northern France.  They spent a few days there in training before moving on on 8 July in the direction of the village of Fleurbaix, arriving about one kilometre east of the settlement on the tenth.  2 Anzac Corps took the place of 1 Anzac Corps which, only a short time earlier, had been called south to the Battle of the Somme, a major conflict that had commenced on the first day of the month.  Many of those men were destined to be sacrificed in the bloody battles of Pozières and Mouquet Farm towards the end of July.  Based at Fleurbaix, just across the front line from the German-held village of Fromelles, what Frederick and the other members of 2 Anzac Corps probably did not know at that time was that they were to be used in a feint attack just a few days hence that would lead to the deaths of many of them.  They had only been in France for a fortnight.

The idea of the attack at Fromelles was to prevent the Germans there from sending any of their troops to the Somme to reinforce their comrades who were under attack.  British general Sir Richard Haking had the idea that the fresh troops from the Antipodes would be able to cross No Man’s Land (that included a creek and extensive German barbed wire) and capture a fortified German salient (bulge in the front line) called the Sugarloaf.  59 Battalion was set the task of crossing almost 400 yards of open land to attack the salient.  This was at least twice the distance that the British high command believed was the maximum distance that could be crossed with any hope of success.  The battalion’s brigade commander, ‘Pompey’ Elliott, quickly came to the opinion that the task was unachievable and would lead to his men being slaughtered.  He made his opinion known to a British staff officer, who agreed with his assessment.  However, Haking dismissed the protest and ordered the attack to go ahead – for which he earned the nickname ‘Butcher’ afterwards.  On 18 July, under bombardment, 59 Battalion took up position in the firing line, near a spot the troops called VC Avenue.  Beginning at 6.45pm on the nineteenth, the men attacked across No Man’s Land in four waves, ‘hopping the [sand]bags’ at five-minute intervals and advancing into a hail of lead and high-explosive and shrapnel shells.  The battalion’s war diary records that the attack did not penetrate the enemy trenches, being held up by intense rifle and machine gun fire about 100 yards from the German front line.  The survivors retreated, many of the wounded ones crawling back to their lines during the night and for the next few days.  When they staggered back, Pompey Elliott was there to console them, tears streaming down his face.

During the early morning, the Germans shelled the battalion’s position heavily, hoping to inflict even more injuries.  The men were relieved at 8.00am and moved to the rear. When a roll was called, four officers and ninety other ranks answered – out of almost 900 men who went over the top the night before.  59 Battalion had been decimated.  By the twenty-first, four more officers and just over 100 men had returned to the ranks.  Around 700 were still missing.

Frederick was among the missing.  He had still not returned by 28 July, so the authorities listed him as killed in action.  Just what happened to his body is open to speculation.  He may have been blown to pieces by a shell.  Alternatively, he may have been discovered, remaining unidentified, on the battlefield after the war and buried in a common grave in what became known as the VC Corner Cemetery.  A further possibility is that his was one of the bodies collected by the Germans and buried in large graves near Pheasant Wood, behind their lines - graves that were only discovered in the last ten to fifteen years.  Many of the bodies were exhumed and buried in a newly-created cemetery nearby.  Some of them have since been identified by DNA investigations.  However, many still remain unknown.

The common grave at VC Corner Cemetery.  410 men , all unidentified, are buried here.   (nzwargraves.org.nz)

Memorial wall containing the names of the missing (1,294 of them), VC Corner Cemetery 

Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery (Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

As Frederick had no children or siblings, his body will never be identified. His only stated next of kin was Miss Morgan. By 1923, she was married and living in Moonee Ponds, as the army headquarters sent a letter to Mrs. E. Sawyer (neé Morgan) that year concerning Frederick’s medals. An earlier letter sent to Miss Morgan at Newmarket in 1921 had been returned unclaimed. As Frederick left no will, the destination of his possessions, possibly including his medals, commemorative scroll and ‘Dead Man’s Penny’, was undetermined. Mrs. Sawyer did make a claim for his war gratuity, but it was initially rejected by the authorities. Documents at the Public Records Office of Victoria indicate that she pursued the claim and finally won. She was also successful in obtaining his life insurance in 1917. The total amount was thirty-four pounds (sixty-eight dollars).

If Frederick’s medals and commemorative items were unclaimed, they probably reside in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Sources

Australian War Memorial

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Lenore Frost

National Archives of Australia http://nzwargraves.org.nz

Travers, Richard: Diggers in France: Australian soldiers on the Western Front,

Sydney, ABC Books, 2008

See more about Botterill's racing career on The Empire Called Blog.

War Service Commemorated

Essendon Gazette Roll of Honour Missing

In Memoriam

BOTTERILL — A tribute to the memory of my

nett-street, Kensington.

Family Notices (1917, September 18). The Age

(Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), p. 1.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article155156307

No death notice in The Argus 1917-1918.