Driver Sydney John Ivers
Rod Martin
July 1915 saw the greatest single number of men volunteering for overseas service – 36,575 to be exact. One of them was brass worker Syd Ivers, twenty-two years old and residing with his parents at 1 Hillside Terrace, Ascot Vale. A propaganda campaign initiated after the April landing at Gallipoli had had its desired effect, as had a liberalisation of the selection requirements. From the next month on, however, there was a concomitant drop in the numbers joining up as the lists of casualties from the Dardanelles began to increase.
Syd was small in stature. 169 centimetres tall and weighing sixty-four kilos, he had grey eyes and brown hair. He also had valuable military experience. Prior to the outbreak of war, he had spent two and a half years in the field artillery reserve. It was no accident, then, that he applied for and was assigned to 10 Reinforcements of 2 Australian Field Artillery Brigade. Specifically, he was allotted to 1 Divisional Ammunition Column. These men were responsible for delivering the ammunition to the guns on the front line, generally using mules for the process. Thus Syd became a mule driver, and probably spent much of his time during training getting used to handling those highly effective but sometimes obstinate animals.
Members of 1 DAC collecting ammunition to transport to the artillery,
Ypres area September 1917 (AWM A00733)
Syd left for the Middle East on 27 September, sailing on A20 HMAT Hororata. The next we hear about him is in December, after he had arrived in Egypt. On the sixteenth of that month, he was hospitalised with an anal fistula. It was diagnosed as being mild, but it still kept him out of action until the following May. Two months after he rejoined his unit, he sailed for France and travelled to the training base at Etaples, near Boulogne. After spending a short time there, he joined 2 FAB in the field on 8 July 1916.
 HMAT Hororata at Port Melbourne April 1915 (AWM PB0438)
At that time, the artillery brigade was in reserve at Doulieu in northern France, not far from Armentières. This was the ‘nursery sector’ of the Western Front, so-called because it was a relatively quiet part of the battlefield, a good place for newly arrived forces to acclimatise themselves to the realities of modern industrial war. The Australian forces had begun arriving there the previous month and were being prepared for their ‘blooding’ at Fromelles and then Pozières. The Battle of the Somme had begun a week before Syd and his compatriots arrived. They had a brief period of quietude at Doulieu and then departed for the town of Albert on 11 July. By the twenty-second the brigade and its support teams, including 1 DAC, were in place at Pozières, ready to support the attack by 1 Australian Division on the ruins of the village the next day. The fight for the village of Pozières and the strategically important ridge behind it was to involve three Australian divisions over a period of two months. The men captured the ruins and the ridge, and held them against massive German counter-attacks. However, the cost was very high - 24 139 casualties, Australia’s greatest single loss ever in a battle, and the gain was of little significance in the overall strategic plan.
 An Australian eighteen-pounder gun in action at Pozières, July 1916.
Note the pile of empty shell casings. 1 DAC transported shells of
of this size as well as those for 4.5 inch howitzers. (AWM EZ0141)
 The main street of Pozières, July 1916 (AWM EZ0095)
2 FAB ceased firing and moved away from the front at the end of July. Over the next two months it alternately supported troops on the Somme Front and bivouacked behind the lines. When in action, the men of the divisional ammunition columns were in constant danger. They had to move up to the guns, which were close to the front line, and maintain a steady delivery of shells. They and their trains of heavily laden mules were easily spotted by the enemy, especially from the air, and were natural targets for the German artillery. Along with other such support forces during the war, they were very much the unsung heroes. To give the reader an idea of the amount of ammunition the column had to transport, the 2 FAB war diary records that, on 10 April 1917 as an example, in support of the impending attack at Bullecourt (which began the next day), the eighteen eighteen-pounders fired 1151 shrapnel shells and 392 high explosive ones. The six 4.5 inch howitzers fired 114 high explosive shells. On the eleventh, 4103 shrapnel and 597 high explosive shells were fired and 1095 howitzer shells used.
At the end of July, 2 FAB moved north into Belgium, positioning itself in the area of Reninghelst. By late October, it was back on the Somme, and stayed there for the remainder of the year. During that time, while based in reserve at Havernas, Syd was taken to hospital on 17 December suffering from bronchitis. He spent Christmas and New Year there, returning to his unit on 6 February. By that time, 2 FAB was back into action. The Battle of the Somme had officially ended the previous November, but hostilities still continued all along the front line over the winter season. During January, the Germans began a strategic retreat to their heavily fortified Hindenburg Line, ceding some of the occupied territory on the Somme to the Allies. As 1 Division moved forward, 2 FAB went with it. On 15 April, 1 Division was struck by a powerful and unexpected German counter-attack in the vicinity of Lagnicourt. The Germans broke through 2 FAB’s lines and the men manning the guns had to beat a hasty retreat, carrying their breech blocks. By 9 am that morning, however, the Germans had been driven back and order amongst the guns was re-established. Only five of the twenty-one guns captured by the Germans had been damaged, and the others were in action again by 11.30 am.
 Ruins of one of 2 FAB’s guns captured by the Germans at Lagnicourt,
15 April 1917 (AWM E04577)
As mentioned above, 2 FAB supported the attack that became known as the First Battle of Bullecourt. Because of poor planning, it ended in disaster for the Australian troops, some 3000 casualties being sustained. The British 5 Army commander, Sir Hubert Gough, wanted to have another go and planned a second attack for 3 May. On that day alone, 2 FAB’s eighteen-pounders fired almost 20 000 rounds. The battle lasted until 17 May, and cost almost 7 000 Australian casualties. It was more successful than First Bullecourt, a piece of the supposedly impregnable Hindenburg Line actually being captured and held. The strategic significance of the action was, however, quite minor.
2 FAB was relieved after 17 May and spent the remainder of the month and most of June resting and training. In mid-July, the men moved north into Belgium to prepare for the attack in the area of Ypres, planned to begin at the end of the month. Syd took some well-earned leave in England during that time, returning to participate in the new battle. Third Ypres (or, as it was erroneously called, Passchendaele) was designed to capture the German-held section of the Belgian coast, including the important submarine pens it built there, and demoralise the German Army. Incessant rain combined with the naturally swampy soils of Flanders turned the conflict into a quagmire of misery for both sides. Still, the Australians achieved some successes, particularly in the Battles of Menin Road and Polygon Wood in September, and Broodseinde in October. 2 FAB supported 1 Division in the first and third named battles.
 1 DAC on the move, Menin Road, October 1917 (AWM E02018)
It was while still in Belgium in October that Syd was wounded by an exploding shell. He received a flesh wound in the leg and an injury to the first and second fingers of his left hand. He was transported to a hospital in France and thence to Queen Mary’s Military Hospital at Whalley in Lancashire, where his first and second fingers were amputated. After leaving the hospital, Syd was granted a furlough and then stayed in England until March 1918, when he was repatriated to Australia for discharge.
Syd arrived back in Melbourne on 5 May. Later in the month, his hand was examined by a doctor and found to be blue and cold. The remaining stump of the first finger was painful and tender. He was discharged from the army on 17 June.
One would have expected Syd to receive a pension for his disability and melt back into the post-war population. Whether he could ever have returned to his trade as a brass worker given that he had lost two fingers is problematical. However, he may not even have had the chance to find out as he died at the Number 11 Australian (military) General Hospital in Caulfield on 2 April the following year and was given a military burial in what is now Fawkner Memorial Park. The writer is unaware of just what Syd’s affliction was. It may well have been Spanish ‘Flu, as the pandemic was sweeping the world at that time. However, it may instead have been something resulting from his injured hand or his war experience in general. His parents must have thought so as his father applied for a memorial scroll and a commemorative plaque when they became available in the early 1920s. Colloquially called ‘Dead Men’s Pennies’, the plaques were presented to the families of men who had died as a result of war service.
Memorial plaque, courtesy of Ken Wright
An investigation by the Australian Repatriation Commission in 1923 determined that Syd’s death was not due to anything related to his war service. However, a scroll and a plaque were nevertheless granted to his parents in February 1924. Was this a mistake, an act of charity for grieving parents, or recognition that the effects of close combat can be manifested in many, sometimes subtle, ways? We shall probably never know.
Sources
Australian War Memorial
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
En.wikipedia.org
National Archives of Australia
Travers, Richard: Diggers in France: Australian soldiers on the Western Front, Sydney, ABC Books, 2008
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