Raid on CELTIC WOOD WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO AUSTRALIA’S ‘LOST COMPANY’ IN 1917?

ROBERT KEARNEY Raid on Celtic Wood by Robert Kearney

©2017 Robert Kearney

The right of Robert Kearney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author and copyright holders.

For those unfamiliar with the Imperial system of measurement or vice versa, the following conversion table is provided: 100 yards converts to 91.44 metres 1000 yards converts to 914.4 metres 1 mile converts to 1.6 kilometres 1 kilometre converts to 1093.6 yards

ISBN: 978 1921 207 013

Cover photograph courtesy estate of 5182 Sapper R H Lewis MM Inside cover map courtesy Imperial War Museum

Designed, printed and bound at Digital Print Australia 135 Gilles Street Adelaide South Australia 5000 www:digitalprintaustralia.com CONTENTS

Acknowledgments...... i Preface...... iii Foreword...... iv Introduction...... vi Excerpt –”Six-Bob-A-Day-Tourist”...... xii Part I: As It Happened Chapter 1 The Battalion...... 1 Chapter 2 Every Step a Struggle...... 23 Chapter 3 Black Day at Broodseinde...... 37 Chapter 4 Midnight Raid...... 52 Chapter 5 To the Edge...... 62 Chapter 6 A Crowded Day...... 73 Chapter 7 ‘One Pip, One Stunt’...... 87 Chapter 8 Raid Analysis...... 102 Chapter 9 Thin and Ragged ...... 111 Part II: Mystery and Myths Chapter 10 How the Raid was Reported...... 121 Chapter 11 Origin of the ‘Mystery’...... 131 Chapter 12 Flawed Theories...... 138 Chapter 13 Men Not on the Raid...... 154 Chapter 14 The Raiders...... 171 Chapter 15 The Unwounded...... 191 Chapter 16 Where the Poppies Weep...... 201 Chapter 17 Devastation...... 216 Chapter 18 The Only Other Casualties...... 225 Chapter 19 Found and Lost...... 241 Chapter 20 Aftermath...... 258 Appendix 1 Field Return...... 267 Appendix 2 Raiders...... 275 Appendix 3 Question of Experience...... 280 Appendix 4 Raid Order and Report...... 285 Appendix 5 Glossary of Terms...... 290 Appendix 6 Bibliography...... 294 Additional Information...... 299 Index...... 308 LIST OF MAPS

Map 1 The Western Front...... xx

Map 2 Heightened German activity after the action at Menin Rd...... 13

Map 3 The route from Chateau Segard to Birr Cross Roads...... 25

Map 4 Anzac Ridge, Albania Wood and Broodseinde Ridge...... 26

Map 5 Situation map, October 4, 1917...... 35

Map 6 1st Australian Div. forward units at Zero, October 4, 1917...... 40

Map 7 10th Battalion positions, October 7, 1917...... 53

Map 8 Aerial photograph and map of Celtic Wood...... 75

Map 9 10th Battalion positions, October 9, 1917...... 77

Map 10 Aerial Photograph overlaying the planned raid...... 91

Map 11 Most likely locations of German machine gun positions...... 92

Map 12 Nieuwemolen, Celtic Wood region...... 134

Map 13 Locations of bodies found after the War...... 245 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 10th Bn Daily Strength State as at noon, September 29, 1917.. 20

Table 2 Accounting for the Forty-eight...... 142

Table 3 10th Bn Battle Casualty figures, October 1-11, 1917...... 151

Table 4 Accounting for the Raiders...... 236

Table 5 Experience of the Raiders...... 238 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Artillery Fire Plan, October 9, 1917...... 84

Figure 2 1st Australian Division Artillery Fire Plan, October 9, 1917.... 115

Figure 3 The Casualty Evacuation System...... 155

Figure 4 10th Bn members listed on the Menin Gate Memorial...... 170

Figure 5 Company layout for the attack on Celtic Wood...... 175

Figure 6 Courts of Inquiry Findings...... 251 Tyne Cot Cemetery, Belgium. Courtesy Steve Lewis. RAID ON CELTIC WOOD

2016 – Author Robert Kearney locates the site of the 1917 Celtic Wood raid in Belgium. Courtesy Colonel Rob Manton (Ret.) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I sincerely thank Christopher Raymondb Henschke for encouraging me to write more about the raid on Celtic Wood than I did in my earlier work Silent Voices – The Story of the 10th Battalion AIF in the Great War 1914- 1918. I wish to acknowledge Chris for his advice, preliminary research and invaluable cross-checking of service records and field returns as well as the many hours he spent with me discussing the raid and the events surrounding it. I am especially grateful for his early contributions and particularly the clever method he employed to discover of the names of the three 3rd Australian Light Trench Mortar men who took part in the raid. Had it not been for the intervention and inspiration of my friend Stephen Lewis, author of a number books and fellow Vietnam veteran, this book may well have been left and lost in my office desk drawer. After reading the manuscript, Stephen assured me the book had to be finished and published in order to correct a small but significant part of Australia’s military history. Stephen I shall be ever grateful to you for breathing new life into the book through your original ideas, writing guidance, editing, map and photograph reproduction, layout and publication of the finished product; your enthusiasm was contagious. To the relatives and friends who loaned letters, photographs, diaries etc. of those who served in the Great War, thank you for your trust – you have greatly assisted in uncovering the truth about the raid. Thanks must also go to the staff, friends, and volunteers of the following organisations, agencies, and institutions who work so hard to preserve our history and especially that of those who gave us all so much. AUSTRALIAN ARMY HISTORY UNIT AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL ARMY MUSEUM OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA BROKEN HILL FAMILY HISTORY GROUP INC. COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES COMMISSION ii RAID ON CELTIC WOOD

GAWLER PUBLIC LIBRARY TOWN OF GAWLER, GAWLER HERITAGE COLLECTION IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF AUSTRALIA RSL VIRTUAL WAR MEMORIAL STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA STATE RECORDS OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA YACKA HISTORY GROUP, YACKA SOUTH AUSTRALIA To the following individuals, thank you for your encouragement, assistance, advice, friendship, and honest feedback and especially for the time you so generously gave to ensure the truth surrounding the raid on Celtic Wood could be told: Major General Neil Wilson AM, RFD, Professor Robert O’Neill AO MID, Dr Roger Freeman OAM, RFD, Dr Andrew Richardson, Colonel Steve Larkins, Christopher Raymond Henschke, Robert John Wood, Michael Kelly, Major Paul Longstaff RFD, Major John Wadlow RFD, Serena Eales, Diane Evans, Sheila Henschke, Elizabeth McFarlane, Anne Richards, Sarah Stopford, Ben Adams, Timothy Buck, Geoffrey Capper, Nicholas Cundell, Dennis Dale, Andrew Faulkner, Brenton Eden AFSM, John Edge, Wayne Clarke, Mark Hardy, Peter Holmes, Glen Jones, Michael Kelly, the Williams Family and Peter Lloyd (for allowing us to reproduce sections of his great uncle Clarence John (Jack) Williams’ memoir, Six Bob a Day Tourist), Dr Roger Lee, Sharyn Roberts, Dr Elsa Reuter, Nicholas Egan, Michael Milburn, Ian Milnes, Grant Napier, Donald Pedler, Brian Symons, Ian Williams, Robert Wood.

Elizabeth Thank you for your enduring love and support. PREFACE iii

PREFACE

One of the most persistent puzzlesb of the First World War has been the fate of the 10th Battalion AIF raiding party of eighty-five men who attacked the Germans in Celtic Wood on the morning of 9 . Only fourteen unwounded men were counted back in after the raid. What had happened to the other seventy-one? Had they been massacred by the Germans and buried in a mass grave? Had some deserted, or been taken prisoner and sent far to the rear? Did the Australian Army fail to exercise its duty of care in regard to the missing by not investigating adequately the fate of the missing men? For one hundred years war historians have conducted research into this problem, and debated their theories in private and in public. Now, after a number of years of assiduous research, this book provides some very persuasive answers for us. The research conducted into what befell every member of the raiding party, includes the conduct of the Germans they encountered that morning and the scrupulousness of the Australian Army’s handling of the episode. Through dedicated investigation many of the questions previously unanswered over the past 100 years are answered herein. This book may well be the capstone of the debate on what befell the men of the 10th Battalion behind German lines on 9 October 1917. It is to be further commended as a work of detail and clarity, in which Robert Kearney’s own experience as an infantryman in the mud and confusion of the Vietnam War gives him an excellent understanding of what took place fifty years before his own war in 1967. I admire the commitment shown to this task and encourage readers with a serious interest in what happened on the Western Front in that great and tragic Passchendaele offensive of 1917, of which the Celtic Wood Raids were a part, to study the book carefully.

Professor Robert O’Neill AO Formerly Chichele Professor of the History of War, All Souls College, University of Oxford, and an Australian Vietnam War infantryman. iv RAID ON CELTIC WOOD

FOREWORD

This remarkable work is in fact btwo books in one. The author openly acknowledges this in the introduction where the reader is advised that Part I deals with the events leading up to the 10th Battalion’s raid on Celtic Wood on 9 October 1917 and Part II is a detailed analysis of what actually happened to the 88 men who took part in the raid. Whilst it is in two separate sections, each part complements the other magnificently and the reader can use the detail of either part to make sense of the mania of the other. I strongly recommend the entire work. Part I is a graphic and detailed description of the privations, hor- rendous conditions, suffering and sacrifices which constituted life as a soldier in an infantry battalion during the Third Battle of Ypres – the . It concentrates on the actions of the 10th Battalion AIF and covers a 10-day period leading up to the action at Celtic Wood. The detail provided makes credible the almost unimaginable; that a man could slip off a duck-board and drown in the mud of a shell crater; that even a minor wound that left a soldier in no-man’s land would almost certainly prove fatal; that even if a wounded soldier did make it back to his own front line, serious medical help was still many hours away; that subsequent artillery bombardments could obliterate all signs of dead and wounded soldiers left after an action. The story tells of many acts of outstanding heroism and selflessness, which characterised the men of the 10th, many of whom had been together since Gallipoli. It tells graphically of the frustrations of the Commanding Officer who had to witness what he saw as the senseless waste of his courageous men and the lack of support in subsequent investigations into the action. As inspiring as this story is, it is a sobering thought that it covers the history of just one battalion for a period of only ten days. Hundreds of other units and thousands of men were suffering the same experiences for the years that this calamity continued. Part II is an astounding piece of detective work. Almost immediately following the raid and the lack of enthusiasm to investigate it, rumours started to abound regarding missing men, possible mass murders of prisoners of war FOREWORD v and cover-ups by successively higher headquarters. Several historians since that time have embellished these rumours by reference to “the Mystery of Celtic Wood”, misrepresenting the facts, jumping to conclusions, lack of attention to detail or just plain errors. This work is different. From the outset, the author has adopted an approach that only draws a conclusion when there is irrefutable evidence that supports it or there is a strong balance of probability of it being true. By painstaking research of original documents, eyewitness accounts and cross-referencing of multiple sources of information, each of the myths is systematically refuted and, remarkably, the fate of each man on the raid established to the level of at least “most probable explanation”. Several other references cannot even agree on the number of men involved in the raid. This work produces a nominal roll and a brief summary of the experience of each. Considering that three contemporary Courts of Inquiry produced relatively vague results, this is a remarkable achievement almost one hundred years on. In fairness, the reader has only to reflect on Part I of this work to realise that members of the respective courts had many other responsibilities and considerations at the time of hearing evidence. I offer my sincere congratulations to the author on this contribution to understanding and resolving one of the “mysteries” of the AIF and commend this book to all who have an interest in the matter. It is also my, and the author’s hope, that this book will bring some form of closure to those who lost a relative at this tragic place. Perhaps now, like the men who died as a result of the raid, this matter can be laid to rest.

Major General Neil Wilson am, rfd Former Commanding Officer 10th Battalion Royal South Australia Regiment vi RAID ON CELTIC WOOD

INTRODUCTION

Secrets! Children have secrets, womenb and men have secrets, we all have secrets, but for those who are close to someone who has been to war, it is often accepted, but never understood, why the secrets of war are rarely shared. When, or if, soldiers share their war experiences with those closest to them, it is generally done light heartedly and often about a humorous situation, person or event. A soldier attempting to explain the horrors of war to those who have not experienced it has a task akin to a blind person trying to explain life without vision to a sighted person; it is too difficult, so why waste time? Secrets in war are necessary, but for the individuals who survive a war, their unwritten ‘code of silence’ as the son of one war veteran described it, can cause those who love them to become frustrated and resent the secrets they never share. In a letter dated 9 February 2006, Mr Lyal Voce, writing about his father, a returned 10th Battalion man, described how he was never able to break the ‘code of silence’. ‘My father, unfortunately, I think I can say, did not get enough out of life and when asked about his war experiences simply replied, “There is nothing to say.” This code of silence continued throughout his life and it was not until the last twenty years I became interested in WWI and tried to put a mental picture to his service.’1� During his service in the 10th Battalion, Lyal’s father, Thomas Frederick Voce, was wounded twice, the first time being when he was buried by a shell and wounded on Sunday 7 October 1917, two days before the raid. Because he would not or could not talk about the war, Lyal knew nothing about his father’s war experiences until long after he had died; this refusal or reluctance to talk about their experiences would have been the same for the families of the men who survived the raid on Celtic Wood and returned to Australia after the war. If the men of the 10th Battalion and particularly the raid survivors ever got around to reading Charles Bean’s 1917 volume of the Official INTRODUCTION vii

History, they must have either chosen to remain silent, dismiss it, or speak about it only among themselves at reunions. They were not keeping the raid and its aftermath a secret; they had simply seen too much of war and did not wish to talk about it, and so what they knew they took to the grave. Following the evacuation of Gallipoli, the war-weary Anzacs returned to Egypt where they were reorganised and reinforced prior to embarking for the Western Front in France. Upon reaching France, the men who had fought so well at Gallipoli soon found the weather, the battlefields, the enemy, and the intense shelling unlike anything they had previously experienced. Many of the AIF’s battles, major operations and minor enterprises on the Western Front took place in or around villages and towns whose names, even the mere mention of, would chill the blood of the survivors for whatever remained of their broken lives; Passchendaele was one of them.

Flanders Offensive – 1917 The Battle of Passchendaele (Third Ypres) was a series of bloodletting battles that commenced at the end of July and raged until November. Field Marshal Haig’s plan was to force the Australian artillery on the Western Front. Courtesy AMOSA Germans off the high ground surrounding the in order to capture the key to German dispositions in Flanders (Roulers railway junction), before then advancing to clear the German held ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge on the Belgian coast. Under intense artillery barrages and in abysmal weather conditions, the men on both sides of no man’s land fought fiercely in their desperate attempts to hold, or take, the ultimate prize – Passchendaele. ‘…the British loss – 400,000 – was considerably less than on the Somme. The German loss perhaps equalled the British. But eight offensives in the mud made the name of this battle one to shudder at ...’2 In eight weeks, the battles of Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde cost the five Australian divisions 38,000 casualties and for viii RAID ON CELTIC WOOD

Australia, with a population then of less than five million people, these numbers were devastating. In October 1917, the worst month of the war for Australia, the AIF suffered more than 26,000 battle casualties, and of these, slightly more than 6,400 men were killed in action or died of wounds. When the Australian Divisions of I Anzac Corps joined the Flanders offensive as part of British General Plumer’s Second Army in late September, they achieved decisive victories in the battles of Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde. Following the success of the on 4 October, Field Marshal Haig, believing German morale was low, chose to prolong the offensive in order to capture and occupy Passchendaele. Early on the morning of 9 October as the exhausted attacking troops of the main attack advanced toward Passchendaele, a small diversionary raid on the extreme right flank was carried out against the German trenches, dugouts, and pillboxes in Celtic Wood.

Celtic Wood Before the war, this peaceful woodland to the east of the Broodseinde- Becelaere road in Belgian Flanders was part of one of the many small farms in the shadow of a relatively low ridgeline, which in time would gain infamy as Broodseinde Ridge. In springtime with the birds singing and sunlight dancing through the leaves, a shaded creek line running through the centre of the Wood with easy access from the road and nearby tracks would have been an ideal picnic area or a secret place for young lovers to rendezvous. By October 1917, the farmhouse was a pile of blackened rubble and although little remained of Celtic Wood it was still a secret place; this now ominous Wood, devoid of sunlight, leaves or laughter was by then just another of the enemy’s killing grounds in the Battle of Passchendaele. The raid on Celtic Wood cost the battalion dearly in dead, wounded, and missing, a fact made clear by the commanding officer who shortly after the raid reported that of the 85 raiders he could at the time only account for 14 unwounded men. The CO’s version of events reflected only what he knew to be true at the time and yet within 24 hours, Australian and British newspapers heralded the raid as a complete success. These words, ‘In war, truth is the first casualty’, written by former soldier and Greek playwright Aeschylus almost 2500 years ago, is today a cliché, the meaning of which scholars and academics still debate. If Aeschylus meant the political lies that cause war come before the death INTRODUCTION ix of the first soldier then his words make sense; however when applied to how the army and the media reported the actions and outcome of the raid carried out by members of the 10th Battalion on 9 October 1917, death came first, and the lies followed. Often in the absence of information, people listen to and carry rumours which, when repeated often, like Chinese whispers, tend to create myths that over time distort the facts to such a degree a mystery is born. Over the years since 1917, various military historians, authors, and journalists have written about the raid and the fate of those involved, but in their books and articles have provided only more questions rather than answers. Just some of the questions left unanswered are about the incorrect date of the raid, the small composition of the raiding party, the commanding officer’s decision to send out ‘inexperienced’ men and the neglect by the authorities to investigate the disappearance of so many men. All of these and more will be answered herein. Some authors who have previously written about the raid claim the majority of the raiders ‘disappeared without a trace’ and hint there was a German cover up after the raid; some have gone beyond hinting and claim the Germans ‘massacred’ the surviving raiders as ‘an act of revenge’ before burying them in an unmarked grave or shell hole. Doctor Bean dedicated less than a page to the raid in his Official History of the Great War; however, since then various authors with few or no other references have built upon his short version of events and or other unreferenced versions by other authors. Often referred to as ‘disastrous’, ‘tragic’ and ‘mysterious’, for those who had survived months of hell at Gallipoli and then Pozieres and or many of the bloody battles prior to October 1917, the raid was probably just one tragic day among hundreds they would spend their lives trying to forget. The significance of this small raid conducted alongside the main attack in the Battle of Poelcapelle has been expanded over the years to where one author has described it as: ‘the most celebrated missing-persons case of .’3� There were hundreds of thousands of allied troops wounded or killed between July and November 1917, and although the dead rest in peace beneath the fertile soil of the battlefield upon which they fell, not all have a known grave. Of those who fell in Flanders, many thousands still lie in unmarked graves or in a well-tended Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery with a headstone marked simply with ‘Known unto God’. In a speech he made at the Australia and New Zealand Luncheon x RAID ON CELTIC WOOD

Club in London in December 1918, Winston Churchill said that even after one, two, or even three hundred years, Australia would look back upon the ‘world-shaking episode of the Great War’.�4 He said he believed Australians would ‘seek to trace some connection’ with the heroes who fought at Gallipoli, on the Western Front or in all the other battles at sea or on land during the Great War has proven correct, and gains momentum with time. Much of what Churchill said during his moving speech has come true, except the details surrounding the raid on Celtic Wood, which have actually been reported with less than the ‘the most intensive care’. This book sets out to refute existing claims that during a raid made by members of the 10th Battalion AIF in 1917 a large number of the raiders went missing without trace. Over the years, various authors have written slightly different versions about the ‘mysterious’ fate of the raiders but generally agree that something sinister occurred in the Wood. Throughout the Great War, it was mandatory for all Australian units and formations to maintain an official daily log of casualties, actions, etc. which were generally maintained as accurately and neatly as possible; in essence, they were writing the unit history a day at a time. After researching the war diaries of all units and formations with which the 10th Battalion were involved as well as supporting documents, it can be shown that previous raid theories were based on erroneous assumptions, and are incorrect. To ensure those unfamiliar with Australia’s involvement in the Great War gain a basic understanding of the 10th Battalion’s organisation and achievements before the raid, the facts are presented in two parts. Part I – includes the topography, key characters and the Battalion’s achievements from the landing on 25 April 1915 up to the end of September 1917. The focus then shifts to the actions of the 10th Battalion, during the horrendous conditions, and suffering they experienced over their 10-day ordeal leading up to the raid on Celtic Wood in early October 1917. Part II – analyses scores of eyewitness accounts, official papers, letters, reports, and service records, all of which help to provide answers to the many previously posed questions and the claims that many of the men ‘disappeared without a trace’. Did the Germans take ‘revenge’, were prisoners ‘massacred’ and dumped into an ‘unmarked grave’ and was there a ‘cover-up’? Also answered are the questions of why the date of the raid and the deaths of the raiders are incorrect, how many were on the raid, who were INTRODUCTION xi their ‘inexperienced’, the missing who were never officially accounted for and what happened to the bodies. Of the 38,000 casualties suffered by the AIF in eight weeks of hard fighting during ‘Third Ypres’, the 10th Battalion, sustained almost 450 in less than three weeks. Recorded on the Menin Gate Memorial are the names of 54,900 men without known graves; 6,000 of these are of Australians who fell in the Ypres Salient. It is to all whose names are on Menin Gate and especially to those of the 10th Battalion who took part in the raid on Celtic Wood on 9 October 1917 that this book is dedicated.

Robert Kearney

ENDNOTES 1 Voce LW, Letter to author, 9 February 2006. 2 Bean CEW, Anzac to Amiens, Australian War Memorial, 1946, p 376 3 Cowley R, What happened at Celtic Wood? – MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History/ summer edition 1992, p. 86 4 Churchill W, Never Give In – The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches, Hyperion, November 2003 – p. 75-76

Recruits enjoying their first Army Meal in the Morphettville Grandstand. Courtesy AMOSA. xx RAID ON CELTIC WOOD

Map 1: The Western Front (Courtesy Australian Army History Unit) “The Great War of 1914 to 1918 is increasingly regarded as the great turning point of all modern history, bringing an end to the century of peace that followed the Napoleonic era and ushering in the century of wars and revolutions. Its scope, violence, and total nature were unprecedented, its consequences incalculable.” Hansen W. Baldwin (22.3.1903-13.11.1991) New York Times Military Editor