Volunteers of Essendon and Flemington, 1914-1918

 

Yeats W      Pte    2845    William            23 Inf Bn    19    Ironmoulder    Single    Pres       

Address:    Newmarket, Marshall St, 14   

Next of Kin:    Yeates, Mrs, mother, 14 Marshall St, Newmarket   

Enlisted:    2 Aug 1915   

Embarked:     A38 Ulysses 27 Oct 1915

Prior service:      Citizen Forces 58 Inf , 2 years

 

Date of death:   28/09/1917   58 Inf Bn  Pte

CWGC: "Son of Francis Henry and Annie Yeats, of 14, Marshall St., Flemington, Victoria, Australia.

Native of Castlemaine, Victoria".

LIJSSENTHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY

 

Private William Yeats

 

Rod Martin

 

He was only nineteen, but iron moulder William Yeats was already an experienced soldier, having spent the previous two years in ‘Pompey’ Elliott’s 58 Militia Battalion.  Now he wanted to be a part of the real thing at Gallipoli.  Signing up on 2 August 1915, probably as soon as his mother would provide her consent, he joined the record 36,575 men who had enlisted by the end of July that year.  Many of them, the flower of Australian manhood, wanted to emulate the efforts of those who had landed on the peninsula on 25 April or soon after.  Many of them also had a sense of adventure and/or a desire to see more of the world.  It is sad to record that the July figure was never exceeded.  Recruitment numbers started to drop off sharply after that month as the newspapers published longer and longer casualty lists, and an increasing number of mature women were seen wearing mourning clothes.

 

William was a slight young man, only just under 168 centimetres in height and weighing fifty-seven kilos.  He was born and raised in Maldon, central Victoria, and moved with his mother and siblings to 14 Marshall Street in Newmarket (now Flemington) before he had reached his mid-teens.

 

 The Yeats home at 14 Marshall St, Flemington.   (Google Earth)

 

Moving to Broadmeadows for training, William was assigned to 23 Infantry Battalion and sailed for the Middle East from Port Melbourne on A38 HMAT Ulysses on 27 October 1915. 

 

HMAT Ulysses                                        (AWM PS0154)

 

By 23 February 1916, William was located at the new Australian base at Tel el Kebir, Egypt, undergoing training for a new battle location in western Europe.  In early 1916, the self-titled “Dinkum Aussies’’ having returned to Egypt from Gallipoli, and with a new influx of recruits from Australia (from then on called “Fair Dinkums’’), the commanders decided to create a number of new battalions.  Rather than have them filled completely with new, untried recruits, the decision was made to split the existing battalions in half, send half of the experienced men to one of the new battalions and join them together with some of the new recruits.  More new recruits would fill the gaps left in the ranks of the existing battalions. As a result, each battalion would have fifty per cent existing soldiers (many of them veterans of Gallipoli), and fifty per cent new ones.  As a result of this reorganisation, William was transferred from 23 Battalion to the newly created 58 Battalion on 20 February - even though he had not seen action. 

 

His new battalion sailed for Marseilles in southern France on 17 June.  Unfortunately for him, William was diagnosed with venereal disease while on board (despite relocating the Australian base away from the brothels of Cairo, it would seem that some men still managed to frequent those locations while on leave from training!)  He was hospitalised on board the ship and then transferred to a hospital in Marseilles upon arrival there on 23 June.  It would appear that his infection was serious, as he spent 102 days in the hospital before being discharged on 30 September. In those days, sufferers of syphilis were often treated with Mercury and the process was reported as being very painful.  No sooner was William out of the hospital than he was back inside, this time being diagnosed with dermatitis.  As a result, he did not arrive at the training base at Etaples in northern France until the first week of November.

 

Isobel (Iso) Rae: Troops arriving at Anzac Camp, Etaples, June 1916     (ART19601AWM)

 

While there, William probably experienced the so-called “Bull Ring’’ - a training area set up to replicate conditions in the trenches: mud, live ammunition, gas, bayonet drill and long sessions of marching across the nearby sand dunes.  Many men reflected afterwards, even after they had been in the real trenches, that the experience in the “Bull Ring’’ was the worst they had suffered during the war.  The English poet, Wilfred Owen, himself a soldier, described Etaples as

 

A vast, dreadful encampment. It seemed neither France nor England, but a vast paddock where the beasts are kept a few days before the shambles . . .Chiefly I  thought of the very strange look on all the faces in that camp: an incomprehensible look, which a man will never see in England; nor can it be seen in any battle, but only in Etaples.  It was not despair, or terror, it was more terrible than terror, for it was a blindfold look, and without expression, like a dead rabbit’s.

 

Even the conditions in the hospital were punitive rather than restorative, and many only partly healed patients were glad to return to the front in order to get out of the place.  Therefore, even if a recuperating William was sent to the hospital rather than the ‘’Bull Ring”, he probably did not escape the poor treatment.  The conditions at the camp were so bad that there was a full-scale mutiny in 1917.  More than 3 000 men rebelled against the harsh regime and six MPs were shot.  The story has it that ten of the mutineers were executed, but this cannot be verified.

 

William was glad, no doubt, to get out of the place and finally join his unit on 5 January 1917.  At that time, 58 Battalion was in reserve at Saint-Vaast, east of Mons  in southern Belgium.  On the twelfth, the men left that location and headed for an intermediate trench line at Bernafay, on the Somme in France.  The Battle of the Somme, the greatest battle of the war, had begun on 1 July 1916 and, while something like 324 square kilometres of territory was recaptured, none of it was of much strategic importance. When the battle was officially declared over in November, very little had changed on the Western Front in terms of advantage or disadvantage for both sides.

 

However, despite the official declaration of the end of the battle, hostilities were still going on. On 16 January, the battalion entered an intermediate trench line at Bernafay.  The men spent the next couple of days clearing snow from the trenches and then repairing them where it was needed.  On the nineteenth, however, before the unit could relieve 57 Battalion in the front trenches, a German counter-bombardment killed one man and wounded three others.  The next day, another man was killed and four wounded by enemy artillery.

 

Australian troops crossing a snow-filled trench at Bernafay, January 1917 (AWM E 00146)

                                                          

58 Battalion was relieved again on 22 January and it moved back to a nearby camp.  By the twenty-ninth, it was in an intermediate line near Delville.

 

On 4 February, while in the front line again, the battalion was involved in a night operation, digging a sap (a tunnel) towards the German trench and then using it to attack and occupy that trench.  The activity was successful but costly: ten men died and thirty were wounded.

 

The next day, the unit was relieved and returned to the camp at Bernafay.  While the men were there, 100 new recruits arrived to bolster the ranks.  On the twelfth, the unit commander noted in the war diary that the post-winter thaw seemed to have arrived, mud being seen for the first time since 16 January.  The European winter of 1916-1917 was described as being the worst for forty years, so the men were probably glad of a rise in temperatures. However, the mud brought its own problems! 

 

Somme mud 1916   (AWM P05380.002)

 

The Australian soldiers were quite active at this time in early 1917.  Recognising their shortage of manpower, the German command decided to stage a strategic withdrawal to their heavily fortified Siegfried (‘Hindenburg’) Line, thus removing bulges (‘salients’) in their front line that were costly to defend in terms of numbers of troops needed.   The allied forces moved into the evacuated areas, but they had to move carefully, as the Germans left many booby-traps behind.  Along with other units, 58 Battalion took part in occupying the newly available territory.  On 24 February, near Fricourt, the men took over recently evacuated German trenches in the front line and then discovered some more along the front line.  The commander noted that, at that time, ‘’. . . information as to the exact position of enemy was not obtainable.’’  However, the Germans were not far away.  A patrol sent out the next day to see what was happening in other enemy trenches behind the front line was fired upon, one man being killed and several others wounded.  The day after that, however, the trench was captured.

 

58 Battalion was relieved on 27 February and began moving back to a rest camp.  It stayed there until 4 March, when it began returning to the front line.  Its stay there was very quiet, and it was relieved and returned to an intermediate trench on the ninth before being dispersed to a number of camp sites in the area.  The men returned to the front line on 13 March and found the trenches in very poor condition as a result of inclement weather.  The Germans were very active again over the next few days, sniping , machine-gunning and bombing - especially with ‘pineapple’ bombs (so called because of their shape).  On the morning of the seventeenth, however, it was noticed that all sniping and machine gun fire died away, leaving what the commander described as ‘’a most unnatural stillness’.  The Germans had retreated further.

 

By that time, however, William had probably been evacuated to hospital, for his record indicates that from 19 March, he was in hospital suffering from foot abrasions. The injury must have been quite serious, as he was sent back to England on 3 April and taken to the South Midland Casualty Clearing Station, thence to an unknown hospital.  He rejoined his unit on 25 April, the second Anzac Day.

 

At the time William returned to his unit, it was located in reserve at Mametz, just east of the town of Albert, in the Somme valley.  On 8 May, the men entrained for Bapaume and were then guided to trenches at Beugny Vaulx, where they relieved 56 Battalion.  This duly happened on 4 May and was probably in support of the wider attack on the Hindenburg Line that became known as the Second Battle of Bullecourt.  It had started the previous day.  Given the proximity of Vaulx to Bullecourt, the men were subjected to German barrages and sniper fire from the Hindenburg Line defences at Bullecourt.  They also discovered many dead Australians in the communications trenches and the front and second lines - testament to the ferocity of the attacks that began on the third.  As the men approached the front line, each one was given two bombs (grenades) to use in the anticipated close combat.  When they reached the front line, the men were actually in a salient, the only part of the Hindenburg Line in the hands of British forces at that time. After bombarding the Australian forces with high explosive and shrapnel shells, the Germans attacked the trenches with grenades at 12.30pm on 10 May, but were unable to break through.

 

The battlefield at Bullecourt, 6 May 1917.  Note smoke from an exploding

shell in the distance       (AWM P02321.065)

 

However, the battalion suffered two men killed and seven wounded as a result of that and other attacks during the day.  Its position in the salient left it exposed to German attacks from a number of sides.

 

On 11 May, it was decided that, in conjunction with a brigade at Bullecourt, the battalion had to attack and hold a certain section of the Hindenburg line on the men’s left.  This action was to take place early the next day.  However, the Germans noticed the resultant movement of the Australian troops as they took up attacking positions, and unleashed a violent bombardment in the evening while massing considerable numbers of infantry nearby.  A sustained barrage from the allied guns broke up the assembly, and the attack was scheduled to go ahead at 3.40 am the next morning.  That duly happened, despite intense German shelling during the night, and the men made a successful penetration of the German line, where fierce hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets and bombs took place.  It was a very bloody battle, during which the enemy trenches were almost completely destroyed.  However, the battalion paid a heavy price for its victory.  When it was relieved in the early hours of 13 May, the commander had to report that forty-six men had died and 182 had been wounded.  Eight men were missing.  Additionally, four Lewis light machine guns were destroyed and two damaged and a considerable amount of technical equipment was also destroyed by shellfire.

 

The Second Battle of Bullecourt ended on 17 May when the Germans gave up their attempts to counter-attack and regain their trenches, and withdrew from the area.  As Richard Travers puts it,

 

Although [British commander-in-chief, Douglas] Haig described it as ‘among the            great deeds of the war’, second Bullecourt . . . cost the Australians 7000 casualties . . . For this price, the Australians had secured a foothold in the supposedly impregnable Hindenburg line, and held it through seven general counterattacks and a dozen minor ones, but had achieved little of lasting value.

 

The same could be said about all of the battles of the war up until this time.  The Germans had lost a few trenches, but their line still held firm.

 

58 Battalion stayed in reserve trenches at Bullecourt until 21 May.  The German infantry may have gone, but their guns and aeroplanes still gave the Australian troops a hard time.  On the twenty-first, the men travelled by road to a rest camp at Biefvillers, just outside the town of Bapaume.  They stayed there for the rest of the month, and then up to 13 June, when they departed for another camp at the village of Contay, north-east of the important railway junction town of Amiens.  The unit stayed there, involved in various forms of training, until 6 July, when it departed for Hérissart, just north of Amiens.  Ten days later, the men were on the move again, this time to a camp at Mailly-le-Camp, thence to Corbie, north of Paris, before arriving back at Mailly on 20 July.  At least the unit was getting to see a lot of the French countryside!

 

On 30 July, 58 Battalion left Mailly and headed for Steenbecque, just south of the village of Hazebrouck.  It is likely that William left the unit that day or the next because he had been granted fourteen days’ leave in England.  It is to be hoped that he enjoyed his time of ‘Blighty’ as he would be dead not long after his return.  When he did return (probably on 18 August, according to the war diary), the men were involved in training exercise in the area of Sercus, just north of Steenbecque.  On 17 August the unit was informed that it would soon be involved in a night march and then a night attack.  However, it was not until 17 September that the battalion moved away from Sercus, headed for Steenvoorde, just west of the Belgian border.

 

The Third Battle of Ypres (often called ‘’Passchendaele” because of its ostensible target) had begun in June that year and troops such as the men of 58 Battalion were moving steadily north and then west to reinforce those already in Belgium.  After the limited victories of the conflict on the Somme, British commander-in-chief Sir Douglas Haig switched his attention to the battlefields of Belgium, the location of two previous Battles of Ypres.  His plan was to move through the village of Passchendaele to capture the north coast of Belgium and the important German submarine pens there and, as a result, demoralise the enemy. Haig argued that such a move would place enormous pressure on the Germans, who would be forced to transfer extra troops into the Ypres area to avoid losing it, thus taking pressure off the beleaguered French army further south, already suffering mutinies.  In addition, capture of the submarine pens would remove much of the threat to allied convoys in the Atlantic, involved in transporting troops, equipment and food from North America.  Moreover, he argued, German morale, already crumbling, would be devastated by the inevitable losses in Flanders.

 

Many historians have been very cynical about Haig’s ostensible reasons for the offensive.  They argue that none of the reasons he provided holds water.  It is more likely, they suggest, that he was desperate to win a major battle – and perhaps the war – before American troops began arriving on the Western Front in large numbers and stole Britain’s thunder (America had declared war on Germany in April 1917).  Another possibility is that, without a victory in Flanders, Haig would lose a political battle – and troops and equipment as a result – against British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who favoured a plan to concentrate on the Italian Front and win the war from there.  More serious, perhaps, is the fact that Haig was attempting to achieve something that was unachievable in two previous attempts (the First and Second Battles of Ypres in 1914 and 1915), and in record time.  As John Masters comments:

 

What no one, looking back, can understand is why he hoped to succeed. 

The year before, on the Somme, the British Army attacked for four months, suffered 400, 000 casualties, and advanced an average of about 3 miles on a front 20 miles wide.  Nothing had happened, and nothing was proposed, that would alter this state of affairs – but the men were now expected to advance 35 miles, the first 15 of them in under two weeks.    

 

The prelude to the offensive, the mining of German positions on the ridge at Messines in June, was a promising start.  The Germans fell back after heavy fighting, and the British and commonwealth troops occupied one of the very few high points in the area.  However, the offensive warned the Germans that something big was afoot, and they reinforced their lines accordingly. The length of time between the Messines operation and the major attack on 31 Julygave the Germans almost two months in which to do this.

 

By the time 31 July came around, there were nearly a million men on each side of the Ypres Front. With the Germans entrenched in their heavily fortified line, Haig had neither a strategical nor a numerical advantage.  Of concern also was the weather.  The success of the major attack of the campaign, towards Passchendaele, depended upon there being dry conditions.  Rain plus relentless shellingwould turn the naturally marshy (and intricately drained) heavy clay around the town of Ypres into impassable mud, bogging down troop advances and destroying the ability to get heavy guns close enough to the front to provide effective preliminary and protective bombardments.  The Somme had its muddy moments, but it was basically rolling chalk country.  Ypres was something else altogether. Leon Wolff has described it as, ‘’gluey, intolerable mud.’’

 

And rain it did, especially on the first day of the attack on 31 July - after some four million artillery shells had been fired into the reclaimed swamp during the preliminary bombardment.  The resultant quagmire swallowed up men, horses and materiel.

 

Conditions on the Ypres battlefield, October 1917    (AWM E01236)

 

It was into this maelstrom that the men of 58 Battalion moved on 18 September, headed for a camp at Reninghelst, near Poperinghe in southern Belgium.

 

At 7:00 am on 20 September, the battalion was standing ready to move in fighting order.   Twenty officers and 562 other ranks would actually be going into the front line.  That day marked the beginning of the Battle of Menin Road, an Australian assault planned by British general Sir Herbert Plumer and Major-General John Monash.  It was going to be a ‘bite and hold’ attack, part of a number of strategies designed to push the Germans back past Passchendaele.  The attack was successful and the Germans were were driven back to Polygon Wood.  As a result, 58 Battalion was obviously not required to provide a feint attack, and the men were stood down for the time being.  The next day, they were ordered into the area of Polygon Wood, to move into the front line there on the night of 23/24 September, taking over from 56 Battalion.

 

Third Ypres: the battlefield       ( Gibbs, Philip: From Bapaume to Passchendaele 1917)

 

After the success at Menin Road, a second ‘bite and hold’ attack was planned for nearby Polygon Wood, to start with a rolling barrage on 26 September.  By 10.00 pm on the twenty-third, two companies of 58 Battalion occupied the first and second lines on the edge of the wood, and two other companies were located in a shell hole area as far back as Glencorse Wood, to the west.  Action was obviously taking place, as at midnight four men were reported wounded.  Which group William was in we have no way of knowing.  By 6.00 am the next morning, two men had been killed and fourteen wounded.  On 25 September, the Germans tried to storm the battalion’s sector, but were repulsed.   They then conducted a program of heavy sniping and periodic shelling for the remainder of the day.

 

The attack on Polygon Wood began officially at 5.50 am on the twenty-sixth.  The troops went over the top,  preceded by the creeping barrage that official historian Charles Bean recorded as being ‘’the most perfect that ever protected Australian troops.’’  At 12.00 noon that day, the Germans shelled the whole area intermittently and then attempted to counter-attack at 6.15 pm.  However, the enemy troops were repulsed by an artillery and Vickers gun barrage and by 10.00 pm artillery fire on both sides slackened off.

 

Australian troops at the edge of Polygon Wood, 20 September 1917.  The trees

had long since been obliterated by shell fire.    (AWM E00776)

 

The men aided in the capture of a prominent ridge on the first day and then went on to capture the high point (called ‘The Butte’) by the end of the day.  However, William was not there to witness that success.  During the day, probably while the Germans were shelling the area, he suffered a fractured skull and concussion.  He was evacuated to a Canadian casualty clearing station, where he died on 29 September.

 

William was buried in the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, just south-west of the town of Poperinghe.

 

"2845 Private W George Yeats, 58th Bn, Australian Inf, 28th September 1917, Age 22.  Dearly Love and Sadly Missed By All.  In God's Care."  Courtesy of the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery. 

 

 

(Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

 

 

5 Australian Division Memorial, Polygon Wood   (memorials.dva.gov.au)

 

William’s mother was granted a pension of eight pounds per fortnight from 8 December 1917.

 

Sources

Australian War Memorial

Bean, C.E.W.: The official history of Australia in the war of 1914-1918, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 12 volumes, 1941

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

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

Google Earth

Masters, John: Fourteen Eighteen, London, Corgi, 1970

http://memorials.dva.gov.au

National Archives Australia

Snowdon, Betty: Iso Rae in Etaples: another perspective of war, www.awm.gov.au/wartime/8/articles/iso_rae.pdf

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

Wolff, Leon: In Flanders Fields, New York, Ballantyne, 1960

 

 

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".

 

Maldon News, 16 Oct 1917

KILLED IN ACTION.

In addition to the death of Sapper Charles Jordan, reported in our last issue, it is now our painful duty to chronicle the sad news of the death of two more Maldon boys, in the persons of Signaller Percy Walter Crayford and Private William Yeats, who have made the great sacrifice in fighting for the cause of liberty and freedom.

 

Signaller Crawford, who was the eldest son of Mr and Mrs N. G. Crayford, of 140 Victoria street, Brunswick, formerly of Maldon, was a native of this town, and spent his school days here. He enlisted about 12 months ago, and belonged to the 58th Battalion. He was killed at Flanders on 24th September, and the most profound sympathy will be felt for the bereaved parents and relatives in the great loss they have sustained by the untimely death of a devoted son and loving brother. This brave soldier, prior to enlisting, was engaged on the commercial staff of the "Age" newspaper, and his fellow employees in the counting house will sincerely regret his death, as he was highly esteemed and very popular with all who knew him for his generous disposition and straightforward character. He sailed for the front on the 14th December last, and was 24 years of age.

 

Private William Yeats was also reared in Maldon, and 22 years; of age. He was beloved by all who knew him, and the third son of Mrs Yeats (nee Paterson) of 14 Marshall street, Newmarket, and formerly of Maldon. He died on 28th September from wounds received in action at the 2nd Canadian Casualty Station, France, and in a recent letter to his mother he mentioned that he had just previously been speaking to Percy Crayford, who has also "fought the good fight," to win honour and liberty for all here. To their bereaved relatives universal sympathy is extended, and may they be comforted in the thought that the nation sorrows with them, with pride at their glorious deeds.

 

Maldon News, 19 Oct 1917

Maldon Shire Council

The ordinary meeting was held at the Shire Hall yesterday. Present - Crs. Bowen (president), Button, Sharp, Davies, Bell, Bryant and Mellios. Apologies - Crs. Fogarty and Preece.

On the motion of the president it was resolved to forward a letter of sympathy to the parents of three Maldon soldiers, viz.-Percy Crayford, William Yeats, and Charles Jordan - who had been killed in action.

 

 

War Service Commemorated

Flemington-Presbyterian-Church

Regimental Register

 

In Memoriam

 

The Age, 13 Oct 1917

DEATHS.

On Active Service

YEATS. — Died on 28th September, of wounds

received in action, at 2nd Canadian Casualty

Station, France, third beloved son of Annie

Yeats, and loving brother of Charlie, Harold,

Nellie and Jack, 14 Marshall-street, Newmarket,

aged 22 years. Loved by all who knew him.

 

YEATS. — Died on 28th September of wounds

received in action at 2nd Canadian Casualty

Station, France, Will, the dearly loved nephew

of Donald and Agnes Kennedy, 50 Marshall

street, Newmarket. In God's care.

 

YEATS. — Died on 28th September, of wounds

received in action, at 2nd Canadian Casualty

Station, France, Will, the dearly loved nephew

of Charles Paterson, 14 Marshall-street,

Newmarket. One of the best. 

 

Maldon News, 16 Oct 1917

DEATHS

ON ACTIVE SERVICE

YEATS - Died on 28th. September, of wounds

received in action at 2nd Canadian Casualty

Station, France, Will, third beloved son of

Annie Yeats and loving brother of Charlie,

Harold Nellie and Jack. 14 Marshall Street,

Newmarket: aged 22 years.

Loved by all who knew him.

 

 

The Argus, 29 Oct 1917

DIED OF WOUNDS

YEATS, W. Newmarket, 28/9/17.

 

 

Maldon News, 9 Nov 1917

Bereavement Notice.

Mrs. YEATS & FAMILY, of Marshall Street.

Newmarket, desire to return sincere

THANKS for the many expressions of

sympathy received from numerous

friends, who have tried to ease the burden

of sorrow caused by the death of Will,

dearly loved son and brother, who died

of injuries 28-9-1917, received in action;

the rich and loving sympathy has been

much appreciated.

 

Weekly Times, 3 Nov 1917

ROLL OF HONOR  

VICTORIAN LIST

DIED FROM INJURIES

Pte. W. YEATS, Newmarket, 28/9/17.