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Middleton-E-H-Pte-2344

Page history last edited by Lenore Frost 3 years, 4 months ago

Volunteers of Essendon and Flemington, 1914-1918

 

Middleton E H       Pte    2344    Ellis Harwood              22 Inf Bn    30    Brassfinisher    Single    C of E       

Address:    Moonee Ponds, Bowen St, 85   

Next of Kin:    Middleton, Sarah, Mrs, 85 Bowen St, Moonee Ponds   

Enlisted:    10 Jul 1915       

Embarked:     RMS Osterley 29 Sep 1915   

 

Relatives on Active Service:

Middleton-C-H-Pte-53 brother

 

Date of Death:   Between 27/07/1916 and 04/08/1916

CWGC: Son of Sarah Middleton, of 25, Sussex St., Moonee Ponds, Victoria, Australia, and the late Thomas Morton Middleton. Native of Victoria.

GORDON DUMP CEMETERY, OVILLERS-LA BOISSELLE

 

Private Ellis Harwood Middleton

 

Rod Martin

 

So many young Australian men enlisted in July 1915!  To be exact, 36 575 of them did. There were good reasons for this.  The landing at Gallipoli had occurred eight weeks earlier and the newspapers were full of stories of heroic deeds.  Enlistments were averaging about 8 000 a month for the first four months of 1915.  Gallipoli changed that.  After the first landing on 25 April 1915,  the realization that the war was going badly and the sinking earlier that month of the British liner Lusitania with 1 200 drowned led to the numbers of men signing up in Australia soaring.  An energetic recruiting campaign launched just after the landing at Anzac Cove also encouraged the rush to enlist, as did a relaxation of the initially very strict physical requirements, originally set down in August the previous year when the recruiting offices were beleaguered by thousands of young men keen to be a part of what was promised to be a short and sharp conflict.

 

One of the volunteers that July was thirty year-old Ellis Middleton from Bowen Street, Moonee Ponds.  He was a brass finisher by trade, working at the well-known firm of John Danks in South Melbourne.Why he had not enlisted the previous year we do not know.  Perhaps he thought at that time that it was a war for younger men.  Gallipoli may have changed his mind.  He was a stocky man, 175 centimetres tall and weighing seventy kilos.  He had no previous military experience, being too old to be subject to the compulsory universal service scheme when it was introduced in 1911.   He was assigned to 22 Battalion, trained at Broadmeadows and departed for the Middle East on RMS Osterley  on 29 September.

 

RMS Osterley, photographed in 1917   (AWM PB0793)

 

By the time Ellis and his compatriots arrived in Egypt in January 1916, Gallipoli had been evacuated and all the surviving troops were back in Egypt.  As a result, 5 Reinforcements were based at the training camp at Tel el Kebir until required to sail to Europe with the veterans of 22 Battalion the following March.  They sailed from Alexandria on the nineteenth of the month, arriving at Marseilles seven days later.  After travelling north by train (probably in trucks originally built to hold horses), they spent some time in the so-called ‘nursery sector’ near Armentières, becoming acclimatized to the trench warfare conditions of the Western Front in a relatively quiet part of the battle zone.

 

On 7 April, the men moved to the area of Fleurbaix, near the village of Fromelles, north of the Somme Valley.  The British High Command was planning a major offensive on the Somme, to begin on 1 July, and troops were being moved in preparation for it.  22 Battalion stayed at Fleurbaix for the rest of the month, alternately manning the forward trenches and moving into reserve for rest and recuperation.

 

Ellis and the others spent the next two  months following much the same routine at Erquinghem near Armentières And then at Bois Grenier, near Fleurbaix.  The men went into reserve on 4 July and then began moving south towards the town of Pozières on the Somme on 11 July.  By the twenty-sixth, they were ready to relieve 6 Battalion at Pozières.

 

The Australian assault at Pozières, which began only four days after the disastrous feint at Fromelles that saw 5533 Australian casualties in one night, was initiated by 1 Australian Division on 23 July.  The aim was to capture the ruins of the village and the strategic ridge behind them.   22 Battalion, as part of 2 Division, went into the front line on the twenty-fifth, relieving 1 Division – which had suffered 5285 casualties in two days.  Battle raged across the front between the twenty-seventh and 4 August, when the men finally captured the ridge. 

 

At some time between those two dates, Ellis was killed. Such were the chaos and confusion in this long and most bloody of all Australian battles that those in charge were not able to take running inventories of casualties, and none of those who survived was able to tell when, where and exactly how Ellis was killed.  The degree of chaos may also be estimated from the fact that 2 Division was relieved after four days of fighting, yet Ellis’s whereabouts and state of health could not be determined for at least another week after that.  Pozières was a particularly murderous affair.

 

Australian trenches at Pozières, July 1916            (AWM E00012)

 

Ellis’s body was found and probably buried on the battlefield, identified by a temporary cross.  Later, it would have been disinterred by the Imperial War Graves Commission and buried in the Gordon Dump Cemetery at nearby Ovillers-La Boisselle.

 

Looking across a mine crater towards Gordon Dump Cemetery.  This area was the scene of a lot of activity during the Pozières campaign and was colloquially called ‘Sausage Valley’ (Department of Veterans’ Affairs)

 

 

Australian troops in ‘Sausage Valley’, 1916   (AWM  P10028.001)

 

Sources

 

Australian War Memorial

Department of Veterans’Affairs, Australia

En.wikipedia.org

National Archives of Australia

Travers, Richard: Diggers in France: Australian soldiers on the Western Front, Sydney, ABC Books, 2008

 

 

MIDDLETON.-A tribute to the memory of our late shopmate, Ellis Middleton, 85 Bowen street, Moonee Ponds, who was killed in action in France.

"In the bloom of his life Death claimed him:

In the pride of his manhood's days.

None knew him but to love him;

None mention his name but in praise."

-Inserted by the employees of John Danks and Son Pty Ltd., South Melbourne.

 

Advertising. (1916, September 14). The Essendon Gazette and Keilor, Bulla and Broadmeadows Reporter (Moonee Ponds, Vic. : 1914 - 1918), p. 2 Edition: Morning. Retrieved February 7, 2012, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article74594105

 

THE LATE E. MIDDLETON

 

E. Middleton, who was recently reported as killed in action in France, was up to the time of enlisting on the committee of the Essendon club. Sincere sympathy is extended to the relatives of the deceased oarsman.

 

ROWING HEROES. (1916, September 20). Winner (Melbourne, Vic. : 1914 - 1917), p. 8. Retrieved September 17, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article154550882

 

Mentioned in this publication

Following the Twenty-second (website)

 

War Service Commemorated

Essendon Town Hall L-R

Essendon Rowing Club*

Moonee Ponds West State School

St James Anglican Church*

UAOD Elliott Lodge*

Anzac Honoured Dead 27 Jul 1916

Essendon Gazette Roll of Honour killed 

 

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