Private Wilfred John Young
Rod Martin
When war broke out in August 1914, young men across Australia flocked to the recruiting centres to offer their services in fighting the ‘Wicked Hun’. Propaganda emphasising and exaggerating the degree and type of German atrocities in Belgium did much to incense these young men. Wilf Young may have been one such person, a furniture fitter by trade, and twenty-seven years old. He quickly signed up on the twenty-first of that month and was assigned to B Company of Lieutenant-Colonel Harold ‘Pompey’ Elliott’s 7 Battalion. He had had no previous military training, so he learned all he could at Broadmeadows before sailing off on A20 HMAT Hororata in the very first Australian troop convoy of the war on 19 October.
Troops boarding HMAT Hororata (left) and HMAT Benalla, Port Melbourne,
19 October 1914 (AWM C02793)
Originally destined for Europe, the convoy sailed across the Indian Ocean towards the Middle East. While at sea, two things of significance happened. One of the naval escorts, HMAS Sydney, destroyed the German raider Emden off North Cocos Island. Then, the army commanders received orders directing them to Egypt, where they would prepare for an assault on the Turkish Dardanelles in an attempt to knock that country, allied to the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, out of the war.
The troops duly disembarked in Egypt, and most of them were then based at Mena, on the outskirts of Cairo. Wilf may have personally been involved in some of the antics the men got up to in that city, including fights with pimps in the red light district.
(Sedate and sober) troops marching from Mena towards Cairo (AWM PS0412)
For reasons unknown, Wilf was assigned as a storeman for B Company and, when the time came for troops to depart for the Dardanelles, he was left behind at Alexandria. He stayed there for the duration of the campaign, and accompanied 7 Battalion when it left for Europe in June 1916. By that time, he had been taken on the strength of the Australian Records Section and, once arrived in France, he joined the Third Echelon General Headquarters in Rouen - presumably still involved in record-keeping duties.
Perhaps being out of the action gave Wilf a greater opportunity than his infantry comrades had to savour the local delights. Whatever the situation, he was obviously not averse to venturing out into the neighbourhood, for he was sent to hospital on 6 August suffering from venereal disease. He was transferred to a general hospital at Camiers and stayed there until mid-September, rejoining his unit at Rouen on the fifteenth.
It is presumed that Wilf stayed in Rouen until 11 May the following year (1917), when he became ill again. We do not know the cause this time, but it may have been sufficient enough for him to be struck off the strength of 3 Echelon and transferred to1 Australian Divisional Base depot at Etaples, near Boulogne.
Wilf was only at Etaples for something like ten days before he rejoined what was left of his comrades in 7 Battalion. At that time, they were in reserve at Henencourt in France, having been severely mauled at Pozières the previous year as part of 1 Division and more recently at the Second Battle of Bullecourt. Just why Wilf was transferred back to the infantry is unknown. Perhaps he requested it, having had no opportunity to be involved in combat – which was, presumably, the reason why he enlisted in the first place. There again, his illnesses may have made him unreliable as a record-keeping person, and his superiors may have decided to send him back.
If Wilf was looking for action, he did not get it at Henencourt. As it had been so badly mauled, the division stayed in the Henencourt area for the whole of June and then into July. While still based there, Wilf took leave in the fourteenth of the month and went to England.
His luck was bad even then. Two days after he arrived, he found himself in hospital again, suffering from Lymphangitis. A sore on his wrist had become septic and caused his glands to swell. He was discharged on the twenty-eighth, having lost two weeks of his leave. One week later, he was rejoining his battalion. A fine holiday that was!
Wilf found 7 Battalion at St. Marie Cappel, still in reserve and involved in training. For the rest of the month, it stayed in that location in the area of Ballieul. It was not until mid-September that it began moving north, heading for the battlefront near Ypres in southern Belgium. The men arrived at Zillebeke, just south of Ypres, on 19 September. The Third Battle of Ypres (or Passchendaele, as it is often and erroneously called) had begun in early June, with a major assault on the German defences commencing on 31 July. Unfortunately, torrential rains began at the same time, turning the naturally marshy soils of the area into an often impassable bog that consumed men, animals, guns and matériel. By 19 September, only a small amount of territory had been gained. That was about to change the next day.
Belgian Flanders in 1917. Zillebeke can be seen just south-east of Ypres. (Gibbs, Philip: From
Bapaume to Passchendaele 1917)
An attack on the German positions in the area of the Menin Road east of Ypres was planned for the twentieth, involving 1 and 2 Australian Divisions – including 7 Battalion. The weather was dry for a change. Wilf and his comrades quickly moved forward at 5.40 that morning, and captured all three of their objectives by 6.00pm that evening. The Germans had been pushed back to the area around Polygon Wood. However, the cost to the Australians was great: 5 000 casualties. On 26 September, a second attack occurred, this time at Polygon Wood and involving 4 and 5 Divisions. The attack was successful in a very short time, the men following a very effective rolling barrage. Sadly, the casualty rate was high once again.
By that time, however, 7 Battalion had been withdrawn to Steenvoorde, and stayed there for the rest of the month, resting, retraining and refitting. It had lost fifty men killed or missing and 160 wounded.
7 Battalion moved back into the front line at Westhoek Ridge on 3 October, ready to be involved in what became known as the Battle of Broodseinde Ridge. Between 5.30 and 6.00 am on the fourth, as the men waited to attack, heavy shelling by the Germans caused numerous casualties. Despite this, the remainder of 1 Division moved forward side by side with the Second and Third and the New Zealand Divisions in what Richard Travers describes as a strong display of hand-to-hand fighting. The ridge was captured, and 7 Battalion fought on in the area until 9 October, when it was withdrawn. The cost for this victory was also heavy: around 6 500 Australian casualties. Quite a bit of the fighting took place in heavy rain, which began falling on the sixth. The terrain quickly turned to glutinous, deadly mud.
It was during that initial shelling by the Germans on 4 October that Wilf was killed. He and his comrades were just about to go over Anzac Ridge as part of the first assault. Private/Corporal P. J. Minogue reported in 1917 and 1918 that he was part of the burial party that found Wilf’s body and hurriedly buried it in the field ‘just as he was.’ His rifle was rammed into the ground over the grave, and his identification disc was left hanging from it. Heavy shelling continued in the area for some time, and Wilf’s grave was obviously obliterated, for no sign of it remained after the war.
Australian troops at Broodseinde Ridge, 5 October 1917 (AWM E00948)
As Wilf had no known grave, his name was inscribed on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres after the war.
The unveiling ceremony at the Menin Gate, July 1927 (AWM H16916)
Sources
Australian War Memorial
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Gibbs, Philip: From Bapaume to Passchendaele, London, William Heinemann, 1918
http://www.diggerhistory.info
National Archives Australia
Travers, Richard: Diggers in France: Australian soldiers on the Western Front, Sydney,
ABC Books, 2008
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