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War Memorial
Australia

Son of Arthur Wells BISHOP and Eva Dunstan nee CROSS of Basket Range Adelaide Hills SA

It's an Australian version of the Saving Private Ryan theme. The story of how a family salvaged something from the mud and blood and tears of Passchendaele, on the Western Front.

How a mother, disconsolate after having two sons killed in the space of a fortnight, dared to write to the Australian Corps commander, General William Birdwood, pleading for their third boy to be spared the same fate.

“I hope you will forgive me the liberty I am taking in sending this to you,” wrote Eva Bishop.

The “liberty” she requested was for Private Lloyd Bishop to be sent home to help his father in their Basket Range strawberry patch, in the Adelaide Hills.

“It is because his poor father, who is a market gardener, is so broken up at the loss of our 2 sons.”

Gunner Walter Bishop died on September 23, 1917, from wounds he received at the Battle of Menin Road.

Sergeant Alfred Bishop was killed in action at Broodseinde on October 4.

(After two visits in a fortnight, little wonder that Eva never talked to the local minister again.)

“Their father is 58 years of age and getting almost too old to do the work in the garden,” she wrote in her pleading letter to Birdwood.

“If you could see your way to grant my request it would be such a relief.

“We are only poor folks and cannot afford to pay anyone to do this for us or I should not have troubled you.

“Oh, I pray do try and spare him and I will bless the name of General Birdwood forever.”

 Alfred was in the vanguard on the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres. The 43rd Battalion went over the top at 3.50am on July 31, 1917.

Alfred was wounded early in the attack but fought alongside his mates all day in a herculean display that earned him the Military Medal.

“He showed wonderful initiative and this, combined with his devotion to duty, inspired his men and turned a critical situation into a success,” the battalion diary recorded.

As the Diggers dashed across the 100m of no-man’s land, the casualties quickly mounted.

When the men faltered in the face of a fusillade of grenades, A Company commander Lieutenant Francis Tucker, a farmer from Denial Bay near Ceduna, rallied the troops.

When Tucker was wounded, Lieutenant Keith Dunstan, an orchardist from Waikerie, filled the breach.

Pity the unlucky Diggers charged with attacking No 13 post, a ruined windmill on the high ground. Ringed with wire and steeled with concrete, the windmill was hard to penetrate.

The defenders laid down a withering fire and soon the senior Australian officer, Lieutenant William Harrington, a clerk from Prospect, fell as did the first wave’s two senior sergeants.

Corporal Errol Roberts, a railway porter of West Torrens, took over to drive home the attack. Roberts was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

The Diggers captured the windmill then beat off three counterattacks but not a fourth. Not to be outdone, Sergeant George Rayner, a novice priest of Glenelg, led 40 men in a flanking assault to recapture the strategic post, wiping out the enemy.

He was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, mentioned in dispatches and commissioned.

The 43rd’s official death toll was 35 but was likely much higher: of the 535 who attacked, 221 were listed as casualties.

Alfred Bishop's turn would come all too soon; on the 4th October 1917, Alfred was killed during the Australian attack which despite sustaining casualties from German artillery while still in their Forming Up Place (FUP), still managed to sweep the German opposition for the all important Broodseinde Ridge.

Alfred Bishop was one of the early casualties caused by German shelling while still in the support line.  Buried in the field near where he died, his body and those of his comrades was subsequently lost on the battlefield and he has no known grave.  His is one of the 58,000 names on the Menin Gate.

Andrew Faulkner - article Adelaide Sunday Mail 30 July 2017