Island of Ireland Peace Park, Mesen (Messines) [DVA]

Fruitless attempts to embrace us

One reason Australians should visit the Island of ireland Peace Park at Mesen (Messines) is that this location was the scene of heavy fighting involving Australian soldiers in 1917.

Just inside the gate of the Park is a plaque with these words: '… from the crest of this ridge, which was the scene of terrific carnage'. Indeed it was, but not carnage caused by the advance of the Irish divisions. That happened well to the north. From the ridge on which the tower stands, at dawn on 7 June 1917, one could have seen the advance of the divisions of II Anzac Corps. West from the tower, and slightly to the north, was the 25th British Division. In the centre, and heading directly for the tower in a north-easterly direction was the New Zealand Division, and across the fields to the south, moving in the same direction, were the lead battalions of the 3rd Australian Division taking part in their first major battle on the Western Front.

From the pillar at the southern end of the Peace Park, which records the name of every county in Ireland, is one of the best panoramic views on the whole Western Front of an Australian battlefield.

The opening of the Battle of Messines was at that time the biggest bang in history. At Hill 60, at the northern extremity of the line, the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company had been at work since November 1916 digging two large mineshafts under Hill 60 and The Caterpillar. Right along the British front were 17 other similar mines, all packed with explosives, and at 3.10 am on 7 June 1917 they were blown simultaneously as the opening move in the Messines attack. The Hill 60 mine created a crater 60-feet deep and 260-feet wide. The effect on the German front-line troops was overwhelming. In the wake of the explosions, and preceded by a creeping artillery barrage, the Australians, New Zealanders and British troops advanced to find a shattered enemy. As Charles Bean wrote:

Everywhere, after firing a few scattered shots the Germans surrendered as the troops approached. Men went along the trenches bombing the shelters, whose occupants then came out, some of them cringing like beaten animals. They 'made many fruitless attempts to embrace us,' reported Lieutenant Garrard of the 40th. 'I have never seen men so demoralised'.

Charles Bean, The AIF in France 1917, Volume IV, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Sydney, 1941, p.595

German prisoners near Messines, Will Dyson, 1917. [Brush and ink with charcoal on paper, AWM ART02214]

From the vantage point of the pillar in the Irish Peace Park the area over which Lieutenant William Garrard and his comrades of the 40th Battalion (Tasmania) attacked that morning is clearly visible. Down the road from the park is the Douvebeek, the Douve River, little more than a stream. Where the road, the N365, crosses the Douve just beyond some farm buildings, is where the 40th went into action. Straight after the mine explosions, they left their assembly lines to the right of the road and headed for their objective about a quarter of a kilometre to the left of the road and just north of the river. The valley, according to the battalion historian, was 'a curtain of mist, dust and smoke'. Bridges were quickly thrown across the Douve but some men simply waded in and climbed the opposite bank. A German machine gun, positioned where the road crossed the river, tried to stop the Tasmanians but Lieutenant William Crosby and Sergeant Lyell Swan moved in behind it and killed the crew with grenades. Other machine guns ahead also caused some casualties but by 3.30 am, 20 minutes after they had started, the 40th were on their objective. When the mist cleared, however, the enemy artillery opened up for the rest of the day, during which the battalion fought on to their final objective, about another kilometre along the northern bank of the Douve.

As they were moving out of action on 9 June, the 40th marched back down the N365 away from Mesen towards Ploegsteert. Some were so tired that they had to be carried in lorries and motor ambulances but as they got close to their camp they could see the Belgian newspaper boys flourishing English papers with the headline—'Capture of Messines–Wytschaete Ridge. Great British Victory'. Victory on the Western Front always came at a cost and between 7 and 9 June the 40th Battalion suffered 317 casualties, killed and wounded.

As the exhausted Tasmanians trudged along that day they would have marched past the cemetery where some of their dead would later lie, Strand Cemetery on the left of the N365 just before Ploegstreert village. Among them, in Plot III (one of the battlefield burial plots), Row E, Grave 13, is Private Arthur Hill, age 22, from Swansea on Tasmania's east coast. One witness to his death, Private Frederick Carr, claimed Hill was killed by 'liquid fire', that is to say by a flame thrower. Charles Bean's first report of flame throwers in action against Australian soldiers was from Mouquet Farm on the Somme in 1916 and an official photograph was taken of a German 'flammenwerfer' captured by the Australians near Ieper in September 1917. Bean is silent on the use of such weapons by the Germans at the Battle of Messines.

At Messines, all the German front–line positions were overrun within minutes. And, despite stiffening opposition, the Messines Ridge was in British hands shortly after 6 am. After the fall of the Messines Ridge the attacking troops dug in and prepared to beat off an impending counter–attack. On that day the Australian Fourth Division was in support of the New Zealand Division of II Anzac and shortly after 11.30 am four infantry battalions of the 4th came directly up the slope to the west of the Irish tower behind the New Zealanders, passed through Mesen, and to the north and south of the village. The 45th Battalion (New South Wales) and the 47th Battalion (Queensland, Tasmania) crested the ridge almost exactly at the Irish tower where they came under enemy shell and small arms fire. They went straight through this barrage with few casualties but, as the 47th took shelter in shell holes down the slope to await a new time to attack in the early afternoon, Captain Francis Davy, of Hobart, Tasmania, was hit and killed. Lieutenant Clifford Mendoza, of Townsville, Queensland, witnessed Davy's death:

A bombardment in progress in the Douve Valley, Mesen (Messines), June 1917. [AWM H12264]

It was just at midday and during a temporary halt at a rallying line. Capt Davy went along giving instructions to platoon commanders. He had just returned to position when a shell got him and killed him straight away. He was buried in the field behind the line south east of Messines.

Captain Francis Davy, Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing (digitised record), Page 6

Davy's grave, which can not have been far from where the Irish Peace Park now stands, was not recovered after the war and his name is recorded among the 'missing' of the 47th Battalion on the Menin Gate in Ieper.