Battle of the Yser
Zonnebeke, Fifth Australian Division Memorial
Just slaughter – Buttes New British Cemetery
After the advance of 26 September 1917 the engineer units of the Fifth Division came up to build strong points and new tracks. Among them was Sapper Leslie McKay, 15th Field Company, Australian Engineers, who was not quite so impressed with the supposed success of the battle:
My God it was terrible. Just slaughter. The 5th Div. were almost annihilated. We certainly gained our objectives but what a cost. Mates I have played with last night and joked with are now lying cold.
Sapper Leslie McKay, diary, 26 September 1917, quoted in Bill Gammage, The Broken Years, Melbourne, 1990, p.204
Captain Ellis admitted that the casualties were ‘severe’ – 545 killed, 172 missing and 2,303 wounded. ‘But how different a result from the Battle of Fromelles’, wrote Ellis, ‘over 2,000 fewer casualties than on that fatal field’. Fromelles, where the division had suffered more than 5,000 casualties in 24 hours for absolutely no gain, was obviously the division’s yardstick for measuring disaster.
Buttes New British Cemetery and the Fifth Australian Division Memorial, Polygon Wood. [DVA]
Australian stretcher–bearers passing through the cemetery near the butte in Polygon Wood captured by the Fifth Division at the Battle of Polygon Wood on 26 September 1917. [AWM E01912]
Many of the Fifth Division who died at Polygon Wood have no known grave and they are commemorated on the Menin Gate. In Buttes New British Cemetery lie a few of those killed on 26 September 1917. Private Archibald Cameron, 53rd Battalion (New South Wales), aged 21, from Bogan Gate, New South Wales, was possibly caught by the German barrage which opened on the rear areas after the initial Australian advance. He was wounded badly in the head and advised to go back to a Regimental Aid Post and he was not seen by anyone in the battalion after that. Cameron lies buried in Plot XXX, Row A, Grave 10. One wonders if Sapper John Parker, Plot XXVIII, Row C, Grave 2, and Lance Corporal William White, Plot XXVIII, Row D, Grave 9, were ‘mates’ joked with and now lamented by Sapper Leslie McKay. Both were members of the 15th Field Company, Australian Engineers, among a group of five men from the unit killed by a high explosive shell on their way up the line after the infantry attack.
Stone sign for Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood. [DVA]
As always, in attacks like those at Polygon Wood, officers led their men forward into enemy fire. Charles Bean, in the official history, mentions by name 32 of the Fifth Division’s officers killed or died of wounds between 24 and 28 September, the period of the Polygon Wood battle. One he singled out was Lieutenant Colonel Oswald Croshaw, Queen’s Yeomanry, an English officer attached to the division to command the 53rd Battalion (New South Wales). The battalion was the lead unit heading for the Butte and Croshaw, described by Bean as ‘one of the noblest British officers in the AIF’, led from the front and was killed. Bean reported that Croshaw had a premonition of his fate and addressed these words to his brother officers:
Gentlemen, your men before yourselves. Look to your flanks. God bless you lads till we meet again.
Headstone of Lieutenant Colonel Allan Scott, 56th Battalion (New South Wales), Butte New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood. [DVA]
Strangely, not one officer of the Fifth Division who died during the Battle of Polygon Wood has a grave in Buttes New British Cemetery. But one who fought in the battle is Lieutenant Colonel Allan Scott, the commanding officer of the 56th Battalion (New South Wales), in Plot II, Row A, Grave 12. At 27, Scott, who served with distinction at Lone Pine, Gallipoli, was one of the youngest battalion commanders in the AIF and he was killed by a sniper on 1 October 1917 near the Butte while briefing the commanding officer of a relieving British battalion.
Field scene, near Polygon Wood. [DVA]
Australian Lewis gunners firing at a German aircraft, Ypres, September 1917. [AWM E00769]
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© 2008 Department of Veterans' Affairs and Board of Studies NSW :: Last update - November 2008