Volunteers of Essendon and Flemington, 1914-1918

 

Raff A  J   Pte    326    Albert James       10 MG Bn    20    Cabinet maker    Single    Pres       

Address:    Kensington, Market St, 79, "Cluny" 

Next of Kin:    Raff, James, father, 79 Market St, Kensington   

Enlisted:    18 Jul 1916       

Embarked:    A73 Commonwealth 19 September 1916   

 

Date of Death: 02/10/1917

CWGC:  "Son of James and Ann Jane Raff, of 79, Market St., Kensington, Victoria".

YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL

 

 

Private Albert James Raff

 

Rod Martin

 

Albert James (Jim) Raff, a twenty-one-year-old cabinet maker from 79 Market Street, Kensington, enlisted in the Australian Army on 18 July 1916, right around the time when many of his countrymen were being slaughtered at places on the Western Front such as Fromelles and Pozières.  Like many of his compatriots, Jim was a slight man, standing just 171 centimetres tall and weighing just under fifty-seven kilos.  He had previous but very basic military experience, having spent thirty months in the junior cadets.

 

79 Market St, Kensington.  (Google Earth)

 

Jim was assigned to 10 Machine Gun Company.  He trained at Seymour, probably specialising with the Vickers water-cooled machine gun. 

 

New machine gunners in training at Seymour 1916      (AWM P08299.002)

 

On 19 September that year, Jim and his compatriots embarked for Europe on A73 HMAT Commonwealth.

 

(P &O Line)

 

Sailing via the Cape of Good Hope to avoid German submarines and other warships in the Mediterranean, the Commonwealth arrived at Plymouth on the south coast of England on 14 November 1916.  Between the twenty-third of that month and March 1917, Jim and his compatriots were based at a machine gun training depot at Grantham, east of Nottingham in the Midlands.  There they became more familiar with the Vickers medium machine gun.  It was mounted on a tripod, weighed forty kilos. and was served by a crew of three.  Because of its weight, it could not be carried as part of an attacking formation.  That role emerged when the Lewis light machine gun was made available to the troops.

 

Vickers medium machine gun 1917       (AWM P08338.001)

 

Steve Larkins tells us that:

 

They were often the lynch-pin of defensive positions and thus the object of enemy attempts to neutralise them as a prelude to attack, by mortar, artillery fire or even raids by parties of grenadiers with hand and rifle grenades.

 

In attack they would be sited to provide indirect ‘plunging fire’ into enemy positions in depth at long range to prevent enemy reinforcements reaching the objective of the attack, or to disrupt enemy attempts to withdraw . . .

 

Given these details, it is not difficult to imagine that machine gun ‘nests’ were prime targets for enemy guns, grenades and snipers.  A machine-gunner’s life was neither  easy nor safe.

 

Although Jim had been assigned to the third reinforcements of 10 Machine Gun Company, he may have been surprised to discover when arriving at Grantham that none of the earlier recruits to that unit had been sent to France by late 1916.  As a result, all the members of the company travelled together from Southampton to Havre on 23 November that year, transferring to Bailleul via Hazebrouck the following day.

 

On the twenty-seventh, they were ordered to transfer to Armentières, the centre of the  ‘nursery sector’, so-called because it was a relatively quiet section of the Western Front that allowed men to become acclimatised to the exigencies of modern industrial war without being in too much danger.  The men took up duties in the trenches at the beginning of December and the unit suffered its first fatality on the fifth - the man killed by a rifle grenade fired from the enemy trench.  By the last day of the year, when the men were progressively being relieved of duty in the trenches, two of them had died and two were wounded. Within the next four days, two more men were wounded and one killed.  And this was in the ‘nursery sector’! 

 

By 17 January 1917, the whole company had been relieved.  However, it was back in action by the twenty-sixth and lost two men wounded in its first twenty-four hours.  By the thirtieth, another man was dead.  Worse was to come.

 

By the time Jim arrived at Le Havre in France on 17 March, 10 Machine Gun Company was in reserve at Ferme du Bois, just west of Steenwerck which, in turn, was west of Armentières. The men, joined at some time by Jim and his compatriots, marched around the area until finally returning to Armentières by 8 April.  They then relieved 20 Machine Gun Company and took over a portion of the town’s defences.  On the twenty-sixth of the month, they in turn were relieved and then travelled north, into Belgium, and based themselves in the area of Ploegsteert, south of the town on Ypres, on 28 April.  That same day, four of the men were wounded by a shell burst. Two days later there was a heavy bombardment from the German guns, followed by a raid from their infantry.  An SOS was sent out for assistance, and five of the machine guns were involved in repelling the enemy.  No one from the Australian side was hurt.

 

Between 5 and 7 May, the Germans bombarded the Ploegsteert area heavily, inflicting considerable damage on roads and back areas. On the sixth, one of the machine guns, being used for anti-aircraft purposes, was knocked out of action.  Just what happened to its crew is not reported, but one soldier was reported killed on the ninth and two wounded.

 

Looking towards Ploegsteert Wood from Strafer’s Nest, December 1917. The machine gun

was knocked out at the site of the nest.     (AWM E01283)

 

From 25 May to the end of the month, the company was in constant action against the Germans, losing one man killed and four injured.

 

Once the Battle of the Somme had petered out in November 1916, British commander-in-chief Sir Douglas Haig set his sights on a new, very ambitious target.  He said that he wanted to break through the German lines in Belgium, retake the occupied coastal area and its associated German submarine pens (whence German submarines were attacking allied convoys in the Atlantic) and generally demoralise the enemy. Some sceptical historians, however, have suggested that his real motivation was to have a big victory before the influx of American troops (their country had entered the war the previous April) stole his thunder.  There was another, possibly motivating, factor as well.  British prime minister David Lloyd George had become disenchanted with the effort on the Western Front, and wanted to shift the focus to the Italian Front. If that happened, Haig would lose influence and importance.  Whatever the real reason, and all three may well have played a part, Haig decided to begin what was to become the Third Battle of Ypres with a massive attack on the German-held strategic ridge at Messines, south of Ypres, on 7 June.  Twenty huge mines were buried in tunnels dug under the ridge. They would create a massive explosion and British and Australian soldiers would then rush in to quickly defeat the devastated German troops who managed to survive. 

 

10 Machine Gun Company, at Ploegsteert and therefore close to Messines, withdrew to a position at Romarin, to the west, and began softening up the German opposition with its guns between 2 and 6 June.  The company commander described this action as  ‘Operation I for “magnum opus’’ ‘.  Then, on the evening of the sixth, it moved forward in support of the troops who were preparing to attack.  At 3.10 am on the seventh, the battle commenced with the detonation of the mines.  Nineteen of them worked, completely destroying the ridge.  At the same time, to the west, Jim and his compatriots began laying down a barrage against the enemy as the infantry moved forward.  The intensity of the battle, and the dangers to the machine-gunners, are indicated by the commander’s list of casualties on that day: five killed in action and twenty-two wounded.  The next day the men were involved in the follow up, and three were killed and twenty-one were wounded.  It was a high price to pay.  After that, on 9 June, the company was withdrawn from the line and returned to Romarin.

 

                                     (Gibbs: From Bapaume to Passchendaele 1917)

 

10 Machine Gun Company stayed in the area around Romarin until the end of the month.  During that period, Jim became ill with an undisclosed malady.  On 25 June, he was taken to hospital and remained there until 4 July.  By the time he returned, the company was still in reserve at Romarin, but moved towards Messines on the tenth of the month to relieve 11 Machine gun Company.  Between 12 July, when the relief was completed, and the twenty-second, eleven men were wounded.  Fortunately for him, Jim was not among them.  At midnight on the twenty-second, eight additional machine gun nests were constructed close to Messines, adding to the original eight that the company had taken over on the twelfth.  A diversion was planned for the night of 30/31 July, no doubt to distract the Germans in the area from the first major assault of the Third Battle of Ypres, an attack towards the village of Passchendaele, to begin further north on the thirty-first.  At 3.50 am that morning, the guns at Messines opened up, and during that day, the company fired 75 600 rounds.  A minor disaster happened, however, before zero hour had even been reached.  A stray shell dropped into one of the trenches occupied by the company, killing two and wounding two others.  It was an inauspicious start to the action.

 

10 Machine Gun Company was involved in combat during the following week, suffering three men wounded and expending thousand of rounds, many of them used in repelling three German counter-attacks.  Although severely wounded in the Battle of Messines in June, the Germans were far from beaten.  No allied advance was recorded during that week, quite possibly because the weather had broken on the thirty-first,  just in time for the beginning of the major assault at Ypres.  Given the very marshy nature of the ground around the town, any success that could be achieved depended on the weather being dry.  As it was, because of the heavy rain, the troops moved forward in thick mud and the attack quickly foundered within sight of the town walls of Ypres.

 

Australian troops moving across the Ypres battlefield, October 1917.  The scene is typical

of the conditions on the battlefield   (AWM E01215)

 

On 5 August, the company was withdrawn and went into reserve.  The company commander reported that the guns

 

. . . had a most severe strain, being exposed to almost continuous bad weather.  They were considerably rusted in places but had withstood the strain in a way which exceeded   expectation.

 

On 13 August, the company headed for the town of Mieurles and billeted there.  The men stayed there until 25 September, cleaning equipment and doing general training. 

 

Then they began moving back towards the front.  On the same day, however, it was registered that Jim had been promoted to the rank of lance-corporal and transferred to 22 Machine Gun Company. The reasons why this move occurred are not known.  The war diary for 22 Company only states on 26 September that ten ‘other ranks’  arrived from ‘’reinforcements’.   Given that Jim was an experienced gunner and the fact that he was promoted at the same time, it is fairly safe to say that the numbers were running short at 22 Company, and experienced men were taken from other units to increase the size of its ranks. 

 

And it was no wonder that numbers in the company were depleted.  Since 20 September, it had been in the thick of  a famous “bite and hold’ attack by Australian troops at Menin Road, east of Ypres.  Orchestrated by Major-General John Monash and the commander of Britain’s Second Army, Sir Herbert Plumer, the attack succeeded in driving the Germans back to Polygon Wood in just a few hours.  22 Company provided machine gun support in the area of nearby Zonnebeke on the twentieth and during the following days.

 

While Menin Road was a success, however, casualties were high, 5 000 being suffered by the Australian 1 and 2 Divisions.  22 Machine Gun Company remained in the Ypres area at the beginning of October.  For new lance-corporal Jim, however, disaster struck on the second of the month.  The war diary tells us that

 

During the night of 1^st/2nd . . . gun emplacements [were] constructed and S.A.A. [ammunition] dumps formed. 

 

The parties employed stayed over night returning this afternoon.  Casualties caused by somewhat heavy shell fire were 2 O.R. killed and 2 O.R. wounded 2O.R. Battle Casualties.

 

Jim was one of the men killed.  As he has no known grave, it is very likely that Jim was blown to pieces.  The following photo shows a shell crater photographed at Ypres on 3 October, the next day.  One can imagine that a close hit by such a force would leave few remains of the men close to it.

 

(AWM E00707)

 

As Jim could not be found and buried, his name is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.

 

His mother was granted a pension of one pound (two dollars) per fortnight from 17 December 1917.

 

 

Sources

 

Australian War Memorial

Gibbs, Philip: From Bapaume to Passchendaele 1917, London, William Heinemann, 1918

Google Earth

https://visitflanders.com

https://vwma.org.au

National Archives of Australia

Pedersen, Peter: The Anzacs: Gallipoli to the Western Front, Melbourne, Penguin, 2007

P and O Line

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

 

 

Pte. Albert James (Jim) Raff was killed in action on 1st October. He was in his 22nd year and was the only son of Mr. J. Raff. "Cluny," Market street, Kensington.   ROLL OF HONOUR. (1917, October 25). The Essendon Gazette and Keilor, Bulla and Broadmeadows Reporter (Moonee Ponds, Vic. : 1914 - 1918), p. 2 Edition: Morning. Retrieved May 26, 2012, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article74604095

 

Flemington-Kensington Church News, November 1917   Corporal J E Higgins (of 86 Westbourne Rd) died of wounds in France on September 27th.  Pte W Yeats (of 14 Marshall St) died of injuries in France on September 28th. Pte A J Raff (of 79 Market St) was killed in action in France on October 3rd.  To the parents and relatives of these men we offer our sincere sympathy.  "Fear not:  for I have redeemed thee.  When thou passes thro' the waters, I will be with thee".

 

 

War Service Commemorated

Flemington-Presbyterian-Church

Flemington PAFS*

Essendon Gazette Roll of Honour With the Colours