Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 2639 LITCHFIELD Frederick (Fred)               26th / 12th Battalions
 
Fred Litchfield was born the eldest child of Frederick (snr) and Sarah (Minnie) Litchfield in the town of Rushden in Northamptonshire. He attended school in Rushden and was at one time a member of Lord Baden Powell’s Boy Scouts. Fred snr was a shoemaker by trade and in 1911, he, his wife and his three children boarded the “Miltiades” in London for a voyage direct to Brisbane. Fred snr was one of three passengers on that voyage from Northamptonshire who were shoemakers, all of whom had been recruited by the Queensland Government to meet a critical shortage of skilled workers. The ship’s passenger list shows Fred (15 years old), Henry (3 years old) and Maggie (2 years old).
 
Fred enlisted in Toowoomba on 11th August 1915. He claimed to be 22 years old but if the Miltiades list is correct, Fred would have been 19 and therefore required his parent’s permission. There is some evidence in Fred’s file to suggest that his parents were unaware of his enlistment for some time. Fred named his father of Blackbutt as his next of kin. Two months after enlisting, Fred boarded the “Seeang Bee” in Brisbane as part of the 6th draft of reinforcements for the 26th Battalion. The reinforcements were transferred to the “Ulysses” in Melbourne and from there completed the voyage to Egypt.
 
During the early months of 1916, the AIF underwent an expansion to double the number of Divisions that could be put into the field by combining experienced Gallipoli veterans with new recruits who had enlisted during the second half of 1915. The 26th Battalion, having been withdrawn from Gallipoli with few casualties remained in tact during this process and reinforcements were not required in any large numbers. As a consequence, Fred was taken on by another battalion, the 12th Battalion. This was a strange decision by the authorities as the 12th Battalion was in a different division to the 26th; and the 12th Battalion was made up of men from Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia. The 26th Battalion on the other hand was almost exclusively made up of Queenslanders. On 29th March 1916, Fred boarded a transport in Alexandria Harbour for the seven day crossing of the Mediterranean, arriving in the French port of Marseilles.
 
The battalion that landed in France comprised of a core of experienced soldiers supplemented by untried reinforcements. During the next three months, the newly constituted battalion was subjected to rigorous training in the rear areas of the Western Front near the Belgian border, as well as periods in the firing line. The ground in this sector was boggy and marshy; totally unsuited to the digging of trenches. Raised breastworks were constructed made up of spoil from quarries nearby and wicker fence panels. There was piped fresh water and a daily hot meal was supplied from the company cookers; a far different situation to that experienced at ANZAC.
 
The somewhat idyllic existence in the “nursery sector” came to an end at the beginning of July. On 1st July 1916, General Douglas Haig, Commander of the British Forces in France and Belgium launched the Battle of the Somme, which he hoped would bring a decisive end to the conflict, then almost two years old. The battalions of Kitchener’s new army, mostly conscripts, suffered appalling losses as they walked into the German guns; 60 000 casualties on the first day of whom 20,000 were killed. The gains of the offensive were minimal save for a small bulge in the line below a strategic ridge which ran across the old Roman Road in the village of Pozieres. Haig ordered the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF to move south from Armentieres to Albert to capture the village of Pozieres and then take the fortified windmill which stood on the highest point of the ridge.
 
The 1st Division, which included the 12th Battalion, moved up to the jumping off tapes below the village on 23rd July and despite determined efforts by the defenders managed to secure the lower part of the village which had by that time been reduced to rubble by artillery. The 1st Division was relieved by the 2nd Division and retired to billets at Tara Hill. Survivors who witnessed the artillery at Pozieres described it as the heaviest they experienced during the entire war. In the operation to take part of the village, the 1st Division suffered 5,300 casualties; the equivalent of entire brigade. Men from the 2nd Division who passed the survivors of the 1st Division as they trudged back to Tara Hill were shocked at the haunted faces that confronted them. In the end, Pozieres would cost the AIF 23,000 casualties, the equivalent of an entire division, and Fred Litchfield in his first major engagement was fortunate to get through the ordeal unharmed.
 
In August 1916, he three brigades of the 1st Division boarded trains at Doullens for the journey north to Belgium and the camps around the town of Poperinghe where time was spent taking on reinforcements, cleaning and repairing equipment and resuming training for the next period of front line duty; this time along the Messines Ridge. The 3rd Brigade rotated in and out of the line at Hill 60, a pile of spoil 60 feet high created when a railway cutting had been dug. At that time, British tunnellers were busy digging under the German defences at Hill 60 to place explosive charges below the German positions. Those charges, and 18 others, were fired almost nine months later in the opening of the Battle of Messines.
 
In November, the 3rd Brigade was ordered back to the Somme to hold the line at Bernafray Wood during the coming winter, which proved to be the harshest in almost 50 years. The Australian infantry was poorly equipped for snow, sleet and mud and illness was common. On 30th December, Fred was hospitalised in the 11th Australian General Hospital at Rouen with influenza. He remained in hospital and convalescent depots for the next four months before rejoining his unit on 12th April 1917.
 
By the first week in April, elements of the 5th British Army under General Gough, which included the Australian divisions, had been cautiously following the withdrawing German forces on the Somme to come up against the formidable defences of the Hindenburg Line When Fred rejoined the 12th Battalion, the 3rdBrigade was rotating in and out of the front line, often occupying trenches abandoned by the withdrawing Germans.
 
In May, the 3rd Brigade was engaged in heavy fighting in the region of Boursies, between Bapaume and Cambrai. On the 8th May 1917, the 12th Battalion acquitted itself very well with Captain Newland and Sergeant Whittle both being awarded a Victoria Cross; the only men from the 12th Battalion to be granted such an award. Fred was promoted to Lance Corporal just after Boursies. The failure to breach the Hindenburg defences convinced the British command to seek other ways of prosecuting the war and the most favourable was the Ypres salient in Belgian Flanders.
 
For Fred and the men of the 12th, time was spent in resting and training around Ribemont throughout June and July 1917. In August, the battalion moved up to Lumbres in Northern France for brigade manoeuvres and inspections by brigade staff. While the 1st and 2nd Divisions had been resting, the 3rd and 4th Divisions of the AIF took part in the massive attack against Messines Ridge south of Ypres. Messines paved the way for a series of small contained assaults along the line of the Ypres to Menin Road. In September, the men of the 1st Division moved up from the rear areas to the ramparts of the ruined city of Ypres. At 5:00 am on 19thSeptember, the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF began an advance under a creeping artillery barrage to capture Westhoek Ridge and Anzac Ridge which became known as the Battle of Menin Road. The concentrated nature of the advance and the superior firepower afforded to the British and Australian gunners made for a quick and decisive victory. While holding the line at Westhoek Ridge, Fred received a gunshot wound to his right forearm. He was transported via a casualty clearing station to the 3rd General Hospital at Le Treport on the channel coast but when the wound did not show signs of healing, he was transferred by hospital ship to the Bath War Hospital on 19th October. Fred was transferred to the Australian Hospital at Hurdcott on 26th November 1917 and he remained in England for the next six months, probably taking up the opportunity to visit Northamptonshire to visit relatives.
 
On 12th June 1918, Fred received movement orders and crossed the English Channel to the Australian infantry base at Havre. On 21st June 1918, Fred rejoined the 12th Battalion which was in the support lines around Hazebrouck on the French / Belgian border. The battalion went into the firing line at Merris in July and conducted a number of fighting patrols into no man’s land. While the 3 brigades of the 1st Division continued to hold the line in the north, the Australian Corps Commander John Monash devised a plan to take back the initiative on the Somme. On 1st August, just prior to relocating from Belgium to the Somme, Lance Corporal Litchfield was promoted to corporal.
 
The battle of Amiens commenced on 8th August 1918 with the judicious use of tanks, artillery, aircraft for spotting and resupply; and four divisions of Australians, three divisions of Canadians and two British divisions and cavalry. The 1st Division holding the line in Belgium travelled south to Amiens, at Monash’s insistence to meet up with their comrades, but arrived too late to be involved in Monash’s plans for the 8thAugust and were instead assigned a reserve role. The 12th Battalion War diary records that the 12thBattalion did not reach the assembly areas near Villers Bretonneux until late on the 8th August.
 
Amiens was, by the standards of WW1 battles, a resounding success. The front on the south bank of the Somme progressed forward ten kilometres, taking the battle into open ground where there were no trenches. By the end of the day, Monash was able to send a message to Haig, “the Union Jack is flying over Harbonnieres.” Monash was lauded as a tactical genius and every senior British and French commander went to his HQ at Bertangles to bathe in the limelight. Haig also came to Bertangles, a huge compliment given Monash’s rank (he was not even a full general). The constant arrival of dignitaries, military and civilian, put a brake on Monash’s ability to concentrate on any planning for further operations. In an unparallelled moment, King George V travelled to Bertangles to invest Monash as Knight Commander of the Bath. The first time a British sovereign had knighted a soldier in the field in over five hundred years.
 
The lack of serious planning for advances over the next week after Amiens became manifest when the 1stDivision, which had been champing at the bit, was put into the line to support further advances by the Canadians and French on the right flank. The usual meticulous planning and timing was absent and as a result artillery barrages were ineffective against an enemy which although thoroughly routed on 8th August was still capable of inflicting serious damage. On 11th August, the 12th Battalion as part of the 3rd Brigade was tasked with attacking Crepy Wood as part of an overall assault on Lihons by the 3rd Brigade. The brigade suffered over 3000 casualties, one third of which according to the 12th Battalion war diary, were caused by their own artillery “dropping short.” Charles Bean, the official historian, noted that the follow up campaign after 8th August was a great example of “how not to follow up a great attack.” Crepy Wood was followed up with an attack against well camouflaged machine guns sited in a number of woods near Proyart. The battalion war diary records that during the actions between 23rd and 26th August 1918, 32 men from the 12th battalion were killed and 154 wounded; almost all due to the well positioned German machine guns.
 
One of those killed in action was Corporal Fred Litchfield aged 25. His body was transported to the Heath Cemetery at nearby Harbonnieres where he was presumably buried with a member of the clergy in attendance. Fred’s father who had moved from Blackbutt to Townshend near Ipswich signed for a meagre parcel of his son’s possessions, a silk scarf and a pair of socks. The Litchfield family chose not to have a personal inscription placed on Fred’s headstone but they did enlist the support of the Returned Services League to enquire where Fred had enlisted.