The heart of the battery

On the road to Flers, January 1917, George Benson. [Watercolour and pencil on paper mounted on cardboard AWM ART00134]

At 3am on 12 November 1916, Bombardier Allan Edward Beeks, of Balmain, Sydney, and Corporal Kenneth Fairey, born in Keyneton, South Australia, both serving in the 2nd Battery, 1st Field Artillery Brigade AIF, were asleep with five other artillerymen in a dugout near Flers. A shell hit the position killing six of them, including Beeks and Fairey. Sergeant Thomas Younger attributed these deaths to lack of sufficient sand-bag protection in front of the dugout. As Younger later wrote, this loss was deeply felt in the unit:

He [Beeks] was a very fine boy and I missed him very much. He and Corporal Ferry [Corporal Kenneth Fairey] were the heart of our battery … Captain Taylor was very broken up when he heard about it and sent Sergeant Watson at once to get them out … They put up crosses for Beeks and Ferry.

Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau file, Bombardier Allan Edward Beeks, page 4

AIF Cemetery, Grass Lane, Flers [DVA]

Both Beeks and Fairey had been awarded Military Medals for bravery and outstanding service during the Battle of Pozières in July 1916. Beeks medal recommendation, in part, read:

He was constantly under heavy shell fire, setting a splendid example to the men working with him and without his devotion to duty the work of the Field Artillery on this flank would have been impossible to carry out.

Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau file, Bombardier Allan Edward Beeks, page 4

Fairey's recommendation was similarly worded and helps us to understand why Sergeant Younger saw these two young men as 'the heart of the battery'.

Marked on the French map of the landscape about a kilometre north of Flers on the D 74, is 'Les Cavées' (the caves) and it was to a burial ground at this location, that had been recently started by Australian medical units at les Cavées, that they brought 20-year-old Beeks and 21-year-old Fairey. They lie there side by side in the only cemetery on the Western Front to carry the acronym AIF—the AIF Burial Ground, Grass Lane, Flers.

Beeks and Fairey were among the first to be buried in this battlefield graveyard for their headstones are in Plot 1, the original plot, in Row A, Graves 3 and 4. After the war this became a 'consolidation' cemetery and more than 4,000 British Commonwealth and French graves were brought in, mostly from the Somme area. British historian Martin Middlebrook describes the AIF Burial Ground, the fifth largest British war cemetery on the Somme, as 'hardly known to visitors, being situated up a track in a near-forgotten corner of the battlefield'.

Less known than the AIF Burial Ground is Bulls Road Cemetery on a side road leading east of out of Flers towards the village of Lesboeufs (the bulls). The cemetery has a fine view back over the fields to the village and the dates on the headstones reflect the Australian occupation of the front-line trenches north and north-east of Flers between November 1916 and February 1917.

What, one wonders, accounts for the death of Private Frank Thompson (in reality Frank Langley), 9th Battalion (Queensland), in Plot I, Row C, Grave 21, who was killed in action on Christmas Day 1916? His battalion was near the front in the period before and after Christmas 1916 and others of the unit killed at that time also lie in Plot I at Bulls Road including Private William Christensen in Plot I, Row C, Grave 22, killed in action on 28 December 1916. Chistensen's fate was probably typical enough of the fatalities during this period of the war—he was killed by a shell while on fatigue duty carrying a wooden 'duckboard'. These 'duckboards’ were long slatted wooden structures placed end–to–end to give passage across the mud.

On New Year's Day 1917, Sergeant Leslie Black, known to all as 'Les', was showing another sergeant, who was to relieve him, around his post in the front line. Black left the trench and was shot by a German sniper. He was brought unconscious back into the trench but died within minutes and was buried at what one eyewitness described as 'Bull Trench alongside Fleurs village'. Black, a railway guard, from Junee, New South Wales, lies in Plot I, Row B, Grave 30.

In Grave 24, Row C, Plot I is Private John Flynn, age 42, a clerk of Woolloomooloo, Sydney, who joined up in mid-1915. Flynn, a Gallipoli veteran, was killed on 2 January 1917 and, in July 1917, Flynn's father received a package from the authorities supposedly containing his son's wallet:

… the wallet received was not the one belonging to my son … and also what has become of his watch, diary, shaving kit, knife and various other comforts he had with him … not that I place any monetary value on them but would like to have them as mementoes in memory of our dear son …

Letter, John Flynn [Snr] to Officer in Charge, Base Records, 31 July 1917, AIF Dossier, John Flynn [Jnr], page 29

There is nothing in John Flynn’s records to suggest his wallet ever turned up.