Volunteers of Essendon and Flemington, 1914-1918

 

Youlden F H Gunner    20021    Frederick Henry            8 FAB    28    Farmer    Married    Bap       

Address:    Moonee Ponds, Athol St, 180  

Next of Kin:    Youlden G, Mrs, wife, 180 Athol St, Moonee Ponds   

Enlisted:    21 Jan 1915       

Embarked:     A7 Medic 20 May 1916 (Sydney)   

 

Date of Death:  7 Oct 1917   8 Bde   Gunner

CWGC: "Son of Joseph Prout Youlden and Amelia Youlden; husband of Gertrude Elsie Youlden, of 180 Athol St., Moonee Ponds, Victoria, Australia. Native of Bendigo, Victoria".

ETAPLES MILITARY CEMETERY

 

Gunner Frederick Henry Youlden

 

Rod Martin

 

He enlisted in Bendigo, his birthplace, on 21 December 1915.  His stated occupation was ‘farmer’.  He listed as his next of kin his father, who lived in Flemington Road.  Then, it would appear, Fred Youlden got married to a woman named Gertrude over the Christmas period and moved to 180 Athol Street, Moonee Ponds.  This necessitated changes on his attestation form.  Initially saying that he was single, Fred now added his wife’s name and address and named her as his next of kin.  The result was that he was technically reenlisted on 21 January 1916 and his new address placed him in the Essendon district.

 

Fred Youlden was twenty-eight years old when he joined up.  He was quite tall at 180     centimetres and quite lean at sixty-eight kilos.  He was assigned to 31 Battery of 8 Field Artillery Brigade (FAB) and trained at Broadmeadows and the Royal Park Depot before moving to the FAB reinforcements, based at Maribyrnong.  The following photo gives an idea of the eighteen-pounder field guns with which Fred and his compatriots trained.

 

A sub-section of 31 Battery Field Artillery militia, Broadmeadows, c. 1915  (AWM DAX 2793)

 

On 20 May 1916, 8 FAB sailed from Melbourne on A7 HMAT Medic.  It was associated with the newly formed 3 Australian Division, under the command of Major-General John Monash.  This division had been created by the federal government with the idea that, through extensive training, it would be more professional than the divisions that had been created or reformed in Egypt after the evacuation from Gallipoli.  Monash was to take the men to England quite soon after they had enlisted and then train them intensively on Salisbury Plain before leading them into battle late in the year.  The large losses of the two Anzac Corps at Fromelles and Pozières in mid-1916 proved the point in this regard.

 

Troops waiting to board HMAT Medic, Port Melbourne, 20 May 1916  (AWM PB0565)

 

HMAT Medic sailing from Port Melbourne, 20 May 1916.     (State Library of Victoria) Image H21099

 

By this time in the war, troop convoys from Australia were sailing via the Cape of Good Hope in order to avoid German submarines in the Mediterranean.  In consequence, the men arrived at the port of Plymouth on the English south coast on 18 July – the day before the very raw 5 Division was sent on what amounted to an almost suicide mission at Fromelles.  Fred and his compatriots moved north-east to Salisbury Plain and trained there until they finally moved to France, arriving on 1 January 1917.  They travelled straight to Strazeele, near the town of Ballieul.  There they were combined with half of 23 FAB, the brigade now having six gun batteries, each composed of three eighteen-pounder field guns and one 4.5 Howitzer.  Fred’s battery was still number thirty-one.  On 6 January, as a result of a reorganisation, Fred’s battery lost its howitzer and gained three more eighteen-pounders.

 

On 9 January, the brigade moved to Armentières, a relatively quiet area of the front called the ‘nursery sector’, a place where soldiers new to France could acclimatise themselves to the rigours of a modern industrial war without being in excessive danger.  Everything is relative, however.  The Germans were still only a short distance away across No Man’s Land and they were quite willing and able to fire rifles and shoot mortars, shrapnel shells, gas shells and heavy explosive ones.  In addition, their aircraft were able to bomb the Allies’ front line as well as detachments and facilities in the rear.

 

Late in the month the brigade carried out its first operational order.  Unfortunately, the war diary does not detail the action, but reports attached to that document indicate that the batteries were involved in providing covering fire for medium trench mortars that were attempting to cut the enemy’s barbed wire – no doubt so that raiding parties could gain access to the German trenches during night-time raids.  There were no reports of deaths or injuries, so it was probably deemed a relative success. 

 

This activity continued through February, but then little of consequence happened in the following month.  During that time, Fred attended 3 Division’s gas school for a period of time, no doubt learning about the use of gas shells in combat. 

 

Early the following month, the brigade moved, along with 3 Division, to the Messines-Wytschaete area of Belgium, south of Ypres.  The men arrived there on the eleventh.  The division’s first offensive action was to be the attack on the strategic ridge at Messines, scheduled for early June.  This area was far more active than the one at Armentières, and the brigade reported its first fatality on 23 April when a sergeant was killed in action.  A gunner was also wounded in the same incident.  The next day, Fred reported sick and was diagnosed with gastritis.  He did not return to duty until the eighth of the next month.  During May, the men of 3 Division prepared for the forthcoming attack on the ridge at nearby Messines.  8 FAB was no doubt involved in taking pot-shots at German entrenchments, in reply to German artillery aimed at them.  The ‘magnum opus’, as it was described by the commander of 39 Battalion, was scheduled to begin with the detonation of twenty huge mines, secreted below Messines Ridge, in the early hours of the morning on 7 June.  A massed attack on the ridge would then follow, taking advantage of the resultant confusion in the German ranks.  Fred may well have been looking forward to this ‘stunt’ but, if so, he was to be disappointed.  Four days before the attack, he was wounded in the wrist and evacuated to 14 General Hospital at Wimereux.  As a result, he did not return to his unit until 21 June, after the successful explosions of nineteen of the mines (one is still buried somewhere under the ridge!), the resultant deaths of up to 10 000 German soldiers and the capture of the ridge.

 

 (Gibbs: From Bapaume to Passchendaele 1917) 

 

However, there was a delay in proceedings after the Battle of Messines.  The forces remained stationary for the most part until close to the end of the following month, retreating to rest areas on occasion, and staying close to the front while on active duty.  Fred and his compatriots may even have spent some time in the Catacombs, tunnels built into the western side of the hills that formed part of the ridge.  However, rest or not, the troops were still close to the action.  As infantryman Edward Lynch put it,

 

Even the quietest parts of the line take their toll.  Even in a quiet innings the wickets fall and players get their despatch to the pavilion, their innings ended.

 

On 31 July, and heralded by fierce rain storms, the officially called Third Battle of Ypres began with attacks on the German lines east of the town of Ypres in Belgium.  After the relative lack of success on the Somme the previous year, British commander -in-chief Sir Douglas Haig decided to concentrate on the battlefront in Belgium, hoping to break through to the coast, seize the German submarine pens there, and demoralise the German forces in the process.  The first target in this planned advance was the village of Passchendaele.  To have any hope of being successful however, the Allies depended on the weather being fine.  Rain would turn the notoriously marshy land in southern Belgium into thick, glutinous, almost impassable mud.  True to form, of course, it rained!  The advance of the allied forces was slow or imperceptible.  By September, little or nothing had been achieved except for the deaths of thousands of allied and German troops and the loss of tons of materiel, horses and mules in the mud.  In many cases, the gunners were unable to support the troops in their assaults because their guns sank in the mud.

 

3 Division stayed in the Messines area until mid-September, then moving north as part of 2 Anzac Corps, destined to take part in some small-scale operations late in the month.

 

British soldiers on the Passchendaele battlefield October 1917    (AWM H08795)

            

On 20 and 26 September, 1 Anzac Corps achieved Monash-planned victories at Menin Road and Polygon Wood respectively, and was then replaced by 2 Anzac Corps, which moved north to prepare for an attack on Broodseinde Ridge.  This occurred on 4 October, and was also a success.  By that time, however, Fred was in hospital in Dannes Camiers, France, suffering from a wound to the chest.  He had been injured on 28 September, close to the front line.  Given the location of the guns, the wound was probably caused by a fragment of a shell fired by the enemy.  There are no Red Cross reports available on the incident.

 

Members of 14 FAB battery, Ypres Front, 28 September 1917   (AWM E00920)

 

Fred lingered on for a number of days, finally dying on 7 October.  He was buried in Etaples Military Cemetery, near Boulogne.

 

Fred’s wife Gertrude was granted a pension of two pounds (four dollars) per fortnight from 12 December 1917.

 

(Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

 

 Sources

 

Australian War Memorial

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

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

                       1918

Lynch, E.P.F. (ed. Will Davies): Somme mud, Sydney, Random House, 2006

Martin, Rod: Percy Charles Richards MM, Melbourne, unpublished, 2004,

National Archives of Australia

State Library of Victoria

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

                             Sydney, ABC Books, 2008

Victoriancollections.net.au

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

 

 

War Service Commemorated 

Moonee Ponds Baptist Church

Essendon Gazette Roll of Honour Wounded

The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (20021) Gunner Frederick Henry Youlden, 8th Brigade Australian Field Artillery, First World War  

https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2096991

 

 

In Memoriam

 

YOULDEN.—In loving memory of my dear hus-
band, Gunner Fred H. Youlden, 31st Battery,
who died of wounds in France, October 7, 1917.
Deeply loved, sadly missed.
Until the day dawn and the shadows flee away.
—(Inserted by his loving wife, Gertie E. Youl-
den, Moonee Ponds.)

YOULDEN.—In loving memory of our dear son
and brother, Fred, who died of wounds in
France, 7th October, 1917.
Yes, he is gone; his much loved voice our ears
no longer hear,
And oft in hours of solitude starts the unbidden
tears;
We would not call thee back, dear Fred, to
such a world as this,
But pray that we shall one day meet thee
in that land of bliss.
He died as he lived, thinking of others.
—(Inserted by his loving parents, sisters, and brother.)

 

Family Notices (1918, October 7). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), p. 1. Retrieved October 29, 2017, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article1404317

 

YOULDEN.—In fond and loving memory of my
dear husband, Gunner Fred H. Youlden, 31st
Battery, who died of wounds October 7, 1917.
Deeply loved, sadly missed.
Until the day dawn and the shadows flee away.
—(Inserted by his loving wife, Gerrtie E. Youl-
den.)

Family Notices (1919, October 7). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), p. 1. Retrieved October 29, 2017, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4676765

 

Fred's wife Gertie never remarried.  She died in 1952.  The couple had no children.

 

 

 

—Lila.

 

Family Notices (1952, December 9). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), p. 8. Retrieved October 29, 2017, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article205428116