Battle of the Yser
Zonnebeke, Fifth Australian Division Memorial
Could not resist the call
The butte at Polygon Wood seized by Australian soldiers of the Fifth Division during the Battle of Polygon Wood fought on 26 September 1917. [AWM E00987]
A casualty of the Polygon Wood battle on 26 September 1917 was Private Ernest Radford of the 12th Machine Gun Company. These heavy machine gunners with their machine gun barrage lent support to the infantry of the Fourth and Fifth Divisions as they attacked on 26 September 1917. Radford was a 1914 emigrant to Australia from England as his mother wrote from there in a letter to AIF authorities after the war:
I am his widowed mother. You will note he was not long in Australia. He emigrated and went out on the Makirnie in May 1914. Assisted passage. He was promised work and hoped to do better for himself and me in the new country. He landed in Melbourne with a letter of introduction to the labour bureau. Subsequently he was engaged by Mr Pickles of Thorpdale who was a butcher. Though my boy had learnt farming he took whatever offered in the way of work being determined to get on and Mr Pickles was sorry to lose him when he enlisted but he could not resist the call to fight for his country.
Letter, Edith Radford, 22 February 1920, service record, Ernest Radford, http://naa12.naa.gov.au/
Headstone of Private Ernest Radford, Australian Machine Gun Corps, Butte New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood. [DVA]
On her son’s Roll of Honour Circular provided to the Australian War Memorial in the 1920s, Edith Radford showed her pride in her son by passing on what his commanding officer had written to her after Ernest Radford’s death:
He had gone through so many actions faithfully, courageously and fearlessly. He was actually firing at the time he was killed. He adds no one has ever done his duty better.
Roll of Honour Circular, Private Ernest Radford, http://www.awm.gov.au/cms_images/awm131/041/041046.pdf
Ernest Radford, age 24, the emigrant boy from Lyme Regis, Dorset, rests in Butte New British Cemetery, Plot XXV, Row C, Grave 18.
Autumn, Butte New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood. [DVA]
The Fifth Australian Division Memorial in the 1920s, Polygon Wood, Ypres. [MP1372/1, 445809-0003, National Archives of Australia]
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© 2008 Department of Veterans' Affairs and Board of Studies NSW :: Last update - November 2008