Ploegsteert, Toronto Avenue Cemetery

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Ploegsteert, Toronto Avenue Cemetery

Fell out by the way
A career so brilliant – John Piggott and James Antcliff
Made the best of things – Wintering at Ploegsteert

Made the best of things – Wintering at Ploegsteert

Just outside Ploegsteert Wood, and along the road, is Mud Corner Cemetery. This can truly be called an Anzac cemetery as all but one of the 85 soldiers buried here are Australians and New Zealanders. The dates on the headstones are overwhelmingly from the months of June and July 1917, a period when II Anzac Corps was consolidating the line hereabouts in the aftermath of the Battle of Messines. One soldier, however, Private Albert French, 3rd Pioneer Battalion, of Narrogin, Western Australia, in Plot II, Row E, Grave 1, tells the story of a different Australian experience in this area. According to his Roll of Honour Circular held by the Australian War Memorial, French was ‘killed in action’ on 1 December 1917 at Ploegsteert. This was the ‘action’, not of battle but of holding the line for the battalions of the AIF spent the winter of 1917–18 garrisoning the trenches at Ploegsteert.

Mud Corner Cemetery, Ploegsteert. [DVA]

Headstone of Private Albert French, 3rd Pioneer Battalion, Mud Corner Cemetery, Ploegsteert. [DVA]

In Prowse Point Cemetery, a little further along the road and up the hill from Mud Lane, is further evidence of the danger of simply ‘holding the line’. Buried, close to each other, in Plot III, Row B, Graves 1, 3 and 4 are Privates Vivian Main, Charles Jennings and John McGuire, all of the 27th Battalion (South Australia) and all killed in action on Christmas Day 1917. That festive day the battalion spent in camp at Romerin just a couple of kilometres west of Ploegsteert Wood. They had just relieved the 25th Battalion in the line and war prevented a traditional Christmas:

However, the boys made the best of things, and cheerfully accepted the inevitable, and after the distribution of our Christmas parcels from Australia, they made merry, snow fights being one of their chief engagements until 3 pm, when a large working party of five officers and 275 other ranks … left Romerin [Camp].

Lieutenant Colonel W Dollman and Sergeant H M Skinner, The Blue and Brown Diamond: A History of the 27th Battalion Australian Imperial Force, 1915–1918, Adelaide, 1921, p.113

Prowse Point Cemetery, Ploegsteert. [DVA]

Australian wiring party, Ploegsteert Wood area, 26 December 1917. [AWM E01457]

Australian wiring party, Ploegsteert Wood area, 26 December 1917. [AWM E04489]

The party proceeded to the front where they helped the 7th Australian Field Engineers in placing 450 metres of wire between the front and second lines. As they worked they were shelled and Main, Jennings and McGuire were killed along with one other man. Their bodies were taken to nearby Prowse Point as this was a battlefield cemetery begun in 1914 when the British army had fought in Belgium for the first time in the defence of Ieper. The unit historian wrote that ‘quite a gloom was cast over the battalion’.

Prowse Point Cemetery, Ploegsteert [DVA]

Winter at Ploegsteert

Headstone of Private John McGuire, 27th Battalion (South Australia), Prowse Point Cemetery, Ploegsteert. [DVA]

But the winter at Ploegsteert passed quietly with most time being spent on work duties. The 11th Battalion (Western Australia) spent time in the area directly north of Prowse Point up the ridge over the Douvebeek River towards Mesen village. They were surprised at the undisturbed nature of the ground by comparison with the Somme area in France where they had spent the previous winter. Once the frosty weather arrived, mud was not such a problem and parties proceeded with digging and placing barbed wire along the lines. Especially appreciated during these months was the constant presence of the Australian Comforts Fund whose volunteers supplied hot coffee and cocoa to men proceeding to and from the lines. Captain Walter Belford, the historian of the 11th Battalion, noted how the battalion, after nearly four years of war, was now an experienced and well–trained unit:

... at the dawn of 1918, the troops were able to face the coming year, and all it had to offer, good or bad, in the dark and uncertain days of this period of the war, with the casualness and humour that were such dominant characteristics of the Australian troops.

Captain Walter Belford, Legs Eleven, Being the Story of the 11th Battalion (AIF) in the Great War of 1914–1918, Perth, 1940, p.529

Mud Corner Cemetery, Ploegsteert [DVA]

The road to Toronto Avenue Cemetery, Ploegsteert Wood. [DVA]

Fell out by the way
A career so brilliant – John Piggott and James Antcliff
Made the best of things – Wintering at Ploegsteert

Ploegsteert, Toronto Avenue Cemetery

Made the best of things – Wintering at Ploegsteert

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