| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Liston W F    Pte   1923

Page history last edited by Lenore Frost 8 years, 11 months ago

Volunteers of Essendon and Flemington, 1914-1918

 

Liston W F     Pte    1923    William Ferrier             22 Inf Bn    24    Clerk    Single    C of E       

Address:    Essendon, Lincoln Rd   

Next of Kin:    Charles, Ilay, Mrs, sister, Lincoln Rd, Essendon   

Enlisted:    11 Jun 1915       

Embarked:     A68 Anchises 26 Aug 1915

Prior training: Volunteer cadets, Kensington State School, 5 years. 

 

Friend of:

Glide F W Pte 1997  

Stelling G Pte 1960

 

Corporal William Ferrier Liston

 

Rod Martin

 

 

In June 1915, enthusiasm for the war continued unabated at home.  The press was indicating that progress was being made at Gallipoli, and the government had launched a spirited recruitment campaign in the wake of the April landing

 

Recruiting poster, 1915.  Australian War Memorial Collection.

http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/ARTV05167  (ARTV05167) 

 

One man to respond to this call to arms was William (Bill) Liston of Lincoln Road, Essendon.  A popular sportsman, Bill was twenty-four at the time and employed as a clerk.  He was well-prepared for military service, having spent three years in the local voluntary cadets.  While weighing only sixty-five kilos and standing 171 centimetres tall, Bill was obviously a game young fellow, playing both football and cricket in local competitions.  He was passed A1 fit and assigned to 22 Infantry Battalion when he enlisted on 11 June.

 

This photo belonged to Walter Scott who trained at Broadmeadows but was discharged prior to embarkation.  His grandson Allen Evans tells the story of Walter Scott. Back row, from left:  1 - , 2 Walter Scott, 3 - , 4 - , 5 Possibly Frank Glide.  Front row from left: 1 - , 2 - , 3 Gus Stelling , 4.  Liston W F Pte 1923 is probably also in this group. Photo courtesy of Allen Evans.

 

Bill did his training at Broadmeadows and embarked for Egypt on A68 HMAT Anchises on 26 August, arriving at Suez on 29 September.

 

Troops waiting to board HMAT Anchises, Port Melbourne, March 1916

 http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/PB0100  (AWM PB0100)

 

Bill and his comrades were transported from Egypt to Gallipoli, arriving on 25 October.  By that time, the conflict there had ground down to a stalemate, each side being involved in an often fatal game of shelling, bombing (grenades, most of the Australian ones home-made by that time) and sniping.  The days of frontal attack had finished for the most part after the incredibly bloody confrontations the previous August.  In fact, an operational memorandum issued on 24 November instructed the Australian forces to take no action against the enemy unless under attack. However, it also noted that no opportunity to kill Turks was to be missed!  The evacuation of the allied forces during the following month had obviously been decided upon.  Bill stayed on the peninsula until evacuated with the rest of the battalion, arriving back at Alexandria on 7 January. 

 

For the next two months, 22 Battalion was based in Egypt, at rest, retraining, obtaining reinforcements and, on occasions, guarding the Suez Canal against possible Turkish attack  However, as the unit commander noted in the war diary, ‘ . . . this was not nerve-wracking as “No Man’s Land”  was many hundreds of miles wide.’  The diary also notes that little leave was granted during that time and, as a consequence, the men had ‘few opportunities   ‘to dispose of the substantial paybook credit balances which had accumulated during the preceding months.’  However, enterprising young Bill must have found something to interest him and possibly absorb his money for he went absent without leave for a day on 16 January.  When he returned he was fined one day’s pay and admonished for his behaviour.

 

In mid-March, as part of the new 1 Anzac Corps, Bill became one of the first Australians to go to the Western Front.  The battalion moved to Alexandria and sailed to join the British Expeditionary Force in Europe, arriving in Marseilles on the twenty-sixth. After travelling north to the front, the battalion was assigned to the ‘nursery sector’ near Armentières, so-called because it was a relatively quiet part of the front, and the troops had a good chance to acclimatise themselves to the conditions without being in too much danger.  By the end of the month, they were located in trenches at Fleurbaix, close to a village that was to become infamous in Australian history four months later: Fromelles.

 

However, 22 Battalion was not slated to be part of the disastrous attack at that place on 19 July, an assault that cost the country more casualties in one day’s battle than ever before or since.  Instead, as part of 2 Division, the battalion had moved early that month to Breilly, neat the town of Amiens, on the Somme River.  The greatest battle of the war had begun with an allied attack on the Somme on 1 July, and 2 Division was to be involved in an assault at Pozières late in the month.  On 23 July, 1 Division advanced on the ruins of the village of Pozières, hoping to seize them and then move on to the strategic ridge beyond.  Occupancy of that would, hopefully, give the Allies access to the fortified village of Thiepval, held by the Germans, and then the Bapaume Plateau.  As Richard Travers puts it,

 

Whilst the 5th Division was decimated at Fromelles in an attack lasting less than 24 hours, 1 Anzac Corps was now to make sacrifices on a similar scale in a series of battles lasting 45 days, in which its three divisions would take turns in mounting attack after attack – nineteen in all – in conditions as trying as any experience in the entire Battle of the Somme. (Diggers in France p.74)

 

1 Division began the attack on 23 July and gained a foothold in the village.  In two days, however, it suffered 5285 casualties, and was relieved by 2 Division, including 22 Battalion, on the twenty-fifth.  Bill and his compatriots went into the front line on 27 July, part of an attack towards the windmill (the highest point on the ridge), and came under intense bombardment from the Germans.  Casualties were reported as being heavy, the battalion’s total for the day being twenty killed, 134 wounded and nineteen missing.  By the time the battalion was relieved on the thirtieth and moved to rest trenches in nearby Sausage Valley, it had suffered 352 casualties.

 

The Pozières battlefield, viewed from the site of the windmill

http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/E02072B (AWM E02072B)  

 

Despite ill-considered criticism of its efforts from British commander-in-chief Sir Douglas Haig, 2 Division finally captured the windmill and the ridge on 4 August and was then relieved two days later.  In seven days it had suffered 6,846 casualties.  22 Battalion was ordered back into the attack late in the day on the fourth, and assisted in securing the ridge and consolidating the position overnight.  In the process, it captured three German machine guns. German opposition throughout the attack had been fierce.  Many men were captured, and 22 Battalion’s commander counted around 200 German dead in the trenches Bill and his comrades occupied.  By the time the battalion withdrew again to Sausage Valley on 5 August it had suffered a total of 651 casualties (killed/wounded/missing) since 27 July – more than two-thirds of its normal complement of around 900.  Deaths amounted to a figure of ninety-one.

 

Sausage Valley, August 1916    

www.awm.gov.au/collection/EZ0113  (AWM EZ0113)

 

22 Battalion went into reserve until the twenty-second of the month, when it returned to Sausage Valley and took up duties such as making roads, guarding ammunition dumps and carting supplies up to the front line.  During this time, the Germans were bombarding the Pozières area very heavily in attempt to regain their lost territory on the ridge.  The targets included Sausage Valley as it was an important supply area and the location of the Australian guns.  Even at this time behind the front line the battalion suffered forty-four casualties.

 

In mid-September, Bill and his compatriots moved to the area of Ypres in Belgium and took up position as the brigade reserve.  This place had been the site of two major but indecisive battles in 1914 and 1915, and had remained a powder keg ever since.  On 21 September, the men relieved 23 Battalion in the front line there, but the Germans were reported as being mainly inactive, save for the occasional mortar attack, sniper shot or aerial bombardment.  At the end of the month, Bill and the others again moved into reserve.

 

Despite being behind the lines, Bill reported to a casualty clearing station on 3 October, suffering from deafness.  One presumes that he had been affected by an explosion that had occurred close to him.  He was away receiving treatment until the fifteenth of the month.  When he returned to his battalion it was preparing to move and, on 20 October, it headed south for the Somme once again.  The men reached Flers in early November and moved into the front line there on the fourth.  The unit war diary records that the weather was very wet and cold, and the trenches muddy.  One of the coldest winters to hit the area in many years had made an early start. As the commanding officer wrote,

 

Great hardships were sustained by all ranks.  Trench feet became prevalent.  The use of whale oil and frequent rubbing minimised evacuations from this cause but absence of any facilities for dry standing made the carrying out of these preventive measures difficult.’

 

Somme winter 1916-17

www.awm.gov.au/collection/E00022  (AWM E00022)

 

Icy conditions on the Somme, January 1917

www.awm.gov.au/collection/E00171 (AWM E00171)

 

Trench foot was caused by standing in mud for hours on end.  The circulation was cut off, sometimes leading to gangrene.  Some men died from trench foot.  The treatment was dryness, rest, heat and elevation.  None of these was available on the Somme in the winter of 1916-17.  The men were needed to soldier on unless very badly afflicted indeed.

 

The battalion was in the front line between 5 – 21 November and suffered seventy-two casualties.  At the same time, 156 men were evacuated because of sickness – trench foot, influenza, bronco-pneumonia and shell shock undoubtedly being included in the list of afflictions.

 

In early December, while in reserve at Flesselles, just north of Amiens and the Somme River, Bill received a promotion to lance-corporal as part of a general move upwards for a number of men.  In military parlance, the move was probably to ‘complete establishment’ after the decimation of the ranks in the preceding months.  Certainly, his promotions to temporary corporal later in the same month and then full corporal the following February are described in that context in his service record.

 

Christmas Day that year was auspicious for 22 Battalion.  It relieved 21 Battalion in the firing line near Thones Wood, so there may not have been much Christmas cheer or ‘pud’ among the men.  However, it itself was relieved three days later, and a quieter new year was celebrated in reserve.  The very next day, however, it was back in the line again, with a complement of 770 men.  The conditions were very bad, mud and water abounding, and German snipers were very active, ‘causing much annoyance’(!).  The battalion held approximately 400 metres of the line, some of it impassable in places.  For the rest of the month, the men were in and out of the front line, usually on fortnightly basis.  Just to indicate that savage deeds were not confined to the enemy, the unit diary records that, on 15 January, a German stretcher bearer who was attending to a wounded officer was shot by an Australian sniper.

 

By the end of the month, Bill and the others were in reserve at Becourt Wood, the complement being down to 693 men.  Much foot rubbing was being ordered.  On 9 February, the battalion again went into the front line, near the village of Le Sars.  Despite heavy German machine-gunning, the men were successfully ensconced along a stretch measuring about 1,300 metres.  Frostbite was now an added danger, requiring ‘elaborate supervision’ to keep it under control.

 

The men again went into reserve on the thirteenth, resting in conditions of mud and slush.  They were back in the line on 21 February, but they soon discovered that conditions had changed.  The mud, slush and intense cold were still there, but the Germans seemed to be going.  Two relatively quiet days made the command suspect that an evacuation was beginning.  Some previously German-held villages elsewhere on the front were occupied on the twenty-fourth.  22 Battalion’s commander recorded that night that ‘the remarkable quietness was . . . extraordinary’.

 

And the Germans were going.  The attrition in their ranks was just as bad as on the allied side, and they were looking to reduce the number of troops needed to man the front line.  They decided that the best way to do this was to re-organise their defences so that they had fewer salients (protrusions that required heavy protection).  In consequence, they surrendered some occupied territory by staging a strategic retreat to their very well-organised and extremely strong Hindenburg Line.  This is what Bill and the others witnessed in February 1917.  As the Germans withdrew, the Allies cautiously moved forward.  22 Battalion men began doing this at 1 am on the twenty-fifth.  The war diary records that, on an intensely cold and foggy night, the men occupied a couple of abandoned trenches.  But the Germans were not going to let them have it easy.  At dawn, some of the men had a ‘brush’ with an enemy patrol at a spot called Little Wood.  As the diary records it,

 

Casualties were not light.  A party of “C” company carrying Mills grenades sustained a loss of 16 killed and wounded through a stray bullet detonating a box of the bombs.  Several men were wounded by “booby traps” left by the enemy.

 

When they finally achieved their objectives, struggling against ‘unspeakable mud’ and intense fatigue, the men

 

. . . (to use the most polite of the many descriptive epithets employed at the time) were “done”.

 

Despite this state of affairs, and with only 290 men at its disposal, the battalion was ordered late in the afternoon to attack an enemy trench at 5.30.  It failed in this task, fifty per cent of those involved being killed or wounded.  The commanding officer attributed this disaster to the failure of high command to appreciate the situation, the thick barbed wire and the lack of artillery preparation.  Such candidness in an official report was unusual – and brave!

 

So it was a very busy and costly day for 22 Battalion.  One of the many casualties was Bill.  He was wounded in the back, neck and elbows and was taken to the nearest field hospital.  From there, he was transferred to hospital in England on 2 March. As it turned out, he was now out of the war.

 

Bill was in hospital in Tooting, London, until 5 May, and was then given a furlough until the twenty-first, so he no doubt enjoyed the delights of wartime London while he had the chance.  After that, he spent time at training depots at Wareham, Codford, Perham Downs and Weymouth.

 

However, he had a problem.  That deafness that had affected him earlier had obviously become worse, to the extent that the authorities decided that he could not return to the front.  As a consequence, he sailed for Australia on 1 November 1917 – again on the Anchises – and arrived back in Melbourne on 5 January.

 

On 15 February 1918, Bill was discharged from the army as being medically unfit.  He was suffering from nerve deafness – probably either a pre-existing condition exacerbated by shellfire or one caused directly by the cacophony that was the Western Front.

 

Sources

 

Australian War Memorial

En.wikipedia.org

National Archives of Australia

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

                             Sydney, ABC Books, 2008,

 

"Bill" Liston, Ascots' popular half forward, has thrown in his lot with Kitchener's team. His clubmates trust he will be in time for the final match, to be played at Constantinople.

 

ASCOT VALE v. WERRIBEE. (1915, June 24). The Essendon Gazette and Keilor, Bulla and Broadmeadows Reporter (Moonee Ponds, Vic. : 1914 - 1918), p. 5 Edition: Morning.. Retrieved September 5, 2012, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article74589175

 

OUR SOLDIERS  

 

Billy Liston writing to one of the Essendon cricketers, has returned to Egypt after a short stay, at Lemnos, after the evacuation of the Peninsula. He has met any amount of local boys over there; and he received the "Gazette," and learned of his team's progress. He is now in the desert and is well. He wishes to be remembered to all the Essendon boys, and expects to be back for a game next season when he thinks the Red-and-Blacks will be well to the fore.

 

OUR SOLDIERS. (1916, March 16). The Essendon Gazette and Keilor, Bulla and Broadmeadows Reporter (Moonee Ponds, Vic. : 1914 - 1918), p. 4 Edition: Morning. Retrieved January 27, 2012, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article74592250

 

The Essendon cricketer, Billy Liston, in writing to a club-mate, states that he has interestedly followed the doings of his club through the medium of this journal's cricket notes, and expressed pleasure at the success attained by the club. Up to the time of writing he had not run across Jimmy Matthews or Bert Russell (two others of the club who are on active service), but he had met Roth Gordon. Jim Hancock is in the same battalion as Gordon; but the writer had not had the pleasure of renewing acquaintance with him. Liston says: "It is just like walking up Puckle-st. here, at times: you run across so many chaps from Essendon way "

 

The young cricketer is in France, and describes it as a "great" country. The Germans seem to do nothing but use shells and gas, and he says there have been some exciting moments under their shell fire. "The other night both sides opened rip with their artillery, and for a couple of hours it was like hell let loose. The enemy also sent over gas at the same time; but fortunately it did not reach our part of the trenches. They use a couple of kinds of gases, which they send over when the wind is in the right direction: but I think we are quite safe against these attacks now, as we are all served with helmets, and one needs only to have confidence in them, as they have been tested and proved. Then, again, the enemy send over in shells a gas called 'weeping gas.' Its effect is not fatal; but it is cruel. It affects the eyes and sends one practically blind for the time. We all have been through a test of both these gases, and the latter, I can tell you, is not too pleasant. There are aeroplane duels every day here, and from what I have seen so far, we seem to be well in front in the air."

 

FROM THE FRONT. (1916, July 13). The Essendon Gazette and Keilor, Bulla and Broadmeadows Reporter (Moonee Ponds, Vic. : 1914 - 1918), p. 5 Edition: Morning.. Retrieved February 2, 2012, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article74593430

 

Two of the Essendon cricketers, who are fighting in France, Corporal Billy Liston and Gunner Clyde Musgrove, have been wounded. The former met with injuries to his head and face, and the latter stopped one in the shoulder.

 

SCOTO-AUSTRALIANS HELP TO WIN THE WAR. (1917, March 29). The Essendon Gazette and Keilor, Bulla and Broadmeadows Reporter (Moonee Ponds, Vic. : 1914 - 1918), p. 6 Edition: Morning. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article74602118

 

Mentioned in this webpage

A First World War soldier who suffered years later  Allan Evans' website (Viewed 6 Feb 2013)

Bill may be included in the photo on this webpage of Allan Evans (Viewed 20 Feb 2013)

 

Mentioned in this correspondence

Stelling-Gus-Letter-from-Cairo circa September-October 1915.

Stelling-G-Letter-en-route- to-Gallipoli October 1915.

Gave evidence to the Red Cross about missing comrade Hahn-L-G-Pte-2435  April 1917

 

War Service Commemorated

Essendon Town Hall F-L

Flemington Branch ANA

Kensington State School

Moonee Ponds West State School

St Pauls Anglican Church, Ascot Vale

Essendon Gazette Roll of Honour Wounded

Regimental Register

Welcome Home 7 Nov 1918 [WG]

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.