WWI YEARS - FLANDERS
According to collective family memory on Arthur's reminiscences about the war, he made mention of "Ypres", "The Somme", "Flanders Field" and "Passiondale". He was trained as a "Lewis" Machine Gunner. He once endured a three day bombardment of shelling, huddled up with others in a right-angled pocket/corner of a trench. His remembering of this would each time lead to him alluding to the fact that he had a bad toothache for the whole duration of the shelling. He and the others were later shocked after the shelling had stopped, and a whistle was blown for some sort of a roll-call. The shock was to realise that only their own small pocket of soldiers, plus a few others, had actually survived the bombardment. Apparently most of that group of 100+ men died in the bombardment, whence Arthur's descendants are lucky to be here.
Arthur left Australia with reinforcements for the 2nd Battalion. With the 1st, 3rd and 4th Battalions this formed the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division, AIF.
Previously the battalion had taken part in the ANZAC landing on 25 April 1915 at Gallipoli. After the withdrawal from Gallipoli, the battalion at first returned to Egypt and then in March 1916 sailed for France and the Western Front. The battalion is particularly mentioned in connection with the battles of Pozières, Bullecourt, Ypres 1917 and Menin Road.
As the war progressed, the overseas divisions were organised into I ANZAC Corps (1st and 2nd Australian Divisions, and the New Zealand Division) and II ANZAC Corps (4th and 5th Australian Divisions). Beginning in March the troops were moved to France, and by July and August were heavily involved on the Western Front. The 5th Division was the first to engage the Germans on 5 July 1916 in a small but bloody engagement at Fromelles in northern France. Shortly after, the 1st, 2nd and 4th Divisions became embroiled in the first Somme offensive, at Pozières and Moquet Farm.
The 2nd battalion took part in operations against the Germans at the Somme in France and around Ypres in Belgium. It's first major action in France was at Pozières in the Somme valley in July 1916. It later fought at Ypres in Flanders, then returned to the Somme.
In the following year, 1917, the Australians were again heavily engaged, in March at Bapaume, in May and June at Bullecourt and Messines, and from September to November in the great battles of the Ypres offensive - Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcapelle and Passchendaele. In early 1917 the German Army withdrew to the formidable defences of the Hindenburg Line. As the 2nd Battalion advanced towards these defences in April 1917, Private T. J. Kenny attacked several enemy machine gun positions with grenades, earning the Victoria Cross.
After Bullecourt, the battalion returned north and spent much of the rest of 1917 fighting in increasingly horrendous conditions around Ypres. Arthur was hospitalised on 2 November 1917 and then shipped back to England.
Flanders
From mid 1916 onwards, France and Flanders became the AIF's main theatre of war.
Flanders is a geographical region in the north of Belgium, corresponding to the Flemish people, and is a constituent part of the federal Belgian state (although the precise geographical area of "Flanders" has changed a great deal over the centuries). The official language is Dutch.
Flanders (and Belgium as a whole) saw some of the greatest losses of life of the First World War, including battles around Ypres and the Somme.
Ypres was the centre of intense and sustained battles between the German and British Commonwealth forces.
Ypres, 1919
Ypres rebuilt - Town Hall or Coth Hall.
Australian troops march through the same scene, Ypres - 25 October 1917
"Ypres has been a very fine city but there is not much left of it now, they have very wide streets and also a beautiful Cathedral. It is at this Cathedral that the Kaiser said he would be crowned King of Belgium, but I am afraid it will not be there when the war is over." (16/8/16 - Diary of Kenneth Sydney Day; later badly wounded on 3/5/17 at battle of Bullecourt and returned to Australia).
Ypres is a historic place. It was at the centre of an area with a population of hundreds of thousands by the 1400s, and was a great cloth marketing town. The Cloth Hall or Lakenhalle was built in the thirteenth century and demonstrated the wealth and power held by the merchants of the town. During World War I Ypres was all but totally destroyed. In 1934 King Albert I and Queen Elisabeth opened the reconstructed belfry and the remainder of the hall slowly followed over the next 24 years. It has been rebuilt and designated a City of Peace, with similar status as Hiroshima in this regard. The Cloth Hall houses a First World war museum named "In Flanders Fields".
Ypres was a key position because it stood in the path of Germany's planned sweep across the rest of Belgium and into France from the North. The German army formed a salient around the city, fortifying positions along the surrounding hills. British, French and allied forces made costly advances from the town of Ypres against the Germans on these surrounding hills.
In the First Battle of Ypres (1914) the British captured the town from the Germans. In the Second Battle of Ypres (1915) the Germans used poison gas for the first time on the Western Front. Chemical weapons had been used elsewhere as early as October 1914 when shrapnel shells containing an irritant substance were fired by German artillery at Neuve Chapelle. In January 1915, shells containing xylyl bromide (tear gas) were fired against Russian troops at Bolimow in Polond on the Eastern Front. The use of chemical weapons escalated massively when, on 22nd April 1915, 168 tons (171 tonnes) of chlorine gas were released from 4,000 cylinders on a 4-mile (6.5km) front against French and Canadian divisions in the Ypres Salient. The Germans also began using phosgene gas in December and 120 men were killed. In the beginning the gas was released from canisters and carried by the wind over the opposing front lines. Later, artillery shells were filled with gas and detonated in the opposing trench system.
Mustard gas, also called Yperite from the name of this city, was used for the first time in the autumn of 1917. Mustard gas was used to deluge the town of Ypres on the night of 12th/13th July 1917, causing 2,014 casualties. The gas shells burst on impact to release the liquid contents which evaporated to give a virtually-odourless gas. Inhalation of the gas was rarely fatal, but caused severe pains in the head, throat and eyes, vomiting and bronchial irritation. Many victims would suffer from recurrent chronic bronchitis for years afterwards. Over the following weeks more than a million gas shells were fired, killing 500 British soldiers and injuring thousands more.
Of the battles, the largest, best-known, and most costly in human suffering was the Third Battle of Ypres (21 July to 6 November, 1917, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele) in which the British, Canadians and ANZAC forces recaptured the Passchendaele ridge east of the city at a terrible cost of lives. After months of fighting, this battle resulted in nearly half a million casualties to all sides (including 36,500 Australians), and only several miles of ground won by Allied forces.
The Third Battle of Ypres was scheduled to start on 25th July but due to several factors, it was delayed until 31st July. It started at 3:50 am on 31st July but days before that a preliminary bombardment for the offensive was commenced, to which the Germans replied by shelling the roads and communication trenches. Mustard Gas is recorded to have been used over the next few days. The mustard gas attacked sensitive parts of the body, caused blistering, damage to the lungs and inflammation of the eyes, bringing about blindness in bad cases (sometimes temporary in lesser cases) and great pain.
Australian infantry with gas masks, Ypres 1917 - Photo by Captain Frank Hurley.
French soldiers wearing gas masks on the Western Front (posed picture).
A gas bomb lands and explodes
Troops blinded by gas.
Gas attack photographed from a plane.
As the above photo shows, all degrees of gas exposure could be encountered, from severe near the point of gas canister impact explosion to less severe from anywhere under the spread of a gas sheet diffusing downwind. It is thought that Arthur may not have got a highly direct dose of gas, yet was seriously enough affected to suffer lasting damage to his lungs, which probably brought about low resistance to later lung infections. He may have suffered recurrent periods of bad health even after return to England.
Even faint or secondary contact with remnants of the gas could have seriously deletarious effect. Nurses were affected just from the traces of gas absorbed on the clothing of gassed soldiers: "... The mustard gas cases started to come in. It was terrible to see them. I was in the post-operative tent so I didn't come in contact with them, but the nurses in the reception tent had a bad time. The poor boys were helpless and the nurses had to take off their uniforms, all soaked with gas, and do the best for the boys. Next day all the nurses had chest trouble and streaming eyes from the gassing. They were all yellow and dazed. Even their hair had turned yellow and they were nearly as bad as the men, just from the fumes from their clothing" (Account from a nurse at No.11 Casualty Clearing Station near Godewaersvelde).
As for the indirect effect of the gas on nurses: "Dear Mr. Fairchild, It is with regret that I have to inform you of the death of your daughter, Miss Helen Fairchild, RN, on January 18, 1918, while on duty with Base Hospital No.10, American Expeditionary Forces, France. D.E. Thompson, Superintendent Army Nurse Corps" (The cause of Nurse Fairchild's death was "acute atrophy of the liver," according to General John J. Pershing. Exploratory surgery revealed a massive stomach ulcer, caused or made worse by exposure to Mustard gas and other gasses used by the enemy).
Also concering the experience of nurses at Base Hospital No. 10 in the Passchendaele area, Third Battle of Ypres, Paul B. Hoeber later wrote: "The first hard experience came when an exceedingly large convoy of patients, overwhelmed by Mustard gas, and the picture of intense suffering, poured in on them in great numbers... 600 in less than 48 hours, and it was repeated for many a night".
Most recovered from gas effects but there were still deaths, and these increased from 1916 through 1917. There were 230 gas casualties suffered by the AIF in 1916, of which 18 were fatal. The bombarding of the Noreuil Valley with over 5,000 gas shells in April 1917 caused only 5 casualties. The 5th Division suffered 150 gas casualties at Bullecourt in May 1917 and the 3rd Division took 425 gas casualties in the Battle of Messines.
The above figures are from before the introduction of Mustard Gas.
Largely as a result of Mustard Gas, Australian gas casualties suddenly soared to 1,675 in October 1917 and to 1,086 in November 1917 when Arthur was incapacitated.
The first use of Mustard Gas against Australian troops was against the Siege Brigade on 10 July 1917. To spread Mustard Gas effectively, the Germans devised a new shell which combined Mustard Gas with High Explosive. Not only did this spread the gas more efficiently, it got rid of the telltale "plop" sound of a gas shell. Mustard shells sounded just like high explosive. Mustard Gas was also a blistering agent that even in low concentrations could blister the skin, blind the eyes and damage the lungs. It reacted strongly with water, so that sweat could draw it out of the air and onto the skin. It could also remain on the ground (or on the clothing of affected soldiers which nurses handled), poisonous and dangerous for up to 72 hours.
Factors contributing to the large toll included men stumbling into gas filled shell holes in the dark; failure or inability to remove contaminated clothing; failure to put respirators on quickly enough; and, most importantly, removing them too early.
