Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 2005 ANDREWS Walter William     41st / 49th Battalion
 
Information regarding Walt Andrews and his association with the Kumbia and Kingaroy district is not contained in any of the official records. It can only be assumed that he worked in the district at some time or someone who lived in the district knew Walt and had his name placed on the Kumbia Roll of Honour.
 
Walt Andrews was born in the County of Essex, England around 1890. His parents are listed as David and Emma Foster. At some time before the outbreak of the war, Walt would appear to have gone to sea. Ships of that time were coal burning steamers and a large number of men were required to shovel coal from the ship’s bunkers to stoke the furnaces to raise steam.
 
When Walt presented himself for enlistment in Brisbane on Christmas Day 1915, he had presumably worked his passage to Australia as a stoker. He gave his age to the recruiting officer as 24 years and stated his occupation as stoker. Walt was living at Albion in Brisbane. He named his mother in England as his next of kin.
 
Walt spent some time in camp at Enoggera training before being allocated to the 5th reinforcements of the 49th Battalion. He departed Brisbane for overseas on the “Clan McGillivray” on 1st May 1916 and arrived in Egypt on 13th June. All of the battalions that had been in Egypt since January of that year had already taken their full compliment of reinforcements and left Egypt for France. Walt and the rest of the 5th reinforcements reboarded a ship for England where they went into camp at the 13th Training Battalion on Salisbury Plain. On 23rd September, Walt was transferred to the 41st Battalion. It was reported in a letter from Walt’s landlady that Walt visited his family on at least one occasion while stationed around Salisbury.
 
The 41st battalion was part of the 3rd Division of the AIF. The division had been established in England under divisional commander Major General John Monash. While the rest of the AIF was engaged in the battles on the Somme in 1916, the 3rd Division was training for the major campaign of 1917. The 3rd Division had achieved almost celebrity status while in England, particularly Monash himself; which prompted the King, George V, to travel down from London to inspect the troops. Monash put on quite a show with almost 22,000 men of the division proceeding past the saluting bay while the King and the General sat astride their horses chatting amicably. They would meet again in 1918 when Monash was invested with his knighthood in France.
 
In November of 1916, the entire 3rd Division proceeded by trains to Southampton where they boarded ships for the crossing of the English Channel. The division would spend the next six months becoming accustomed to the routines of warfare on the western front while preparing for its first major action at Messines.
 
 
The Supreme British Commander on the Western Front, General Douglas Haig, planned a totally British campaign (in the context of WW1, British included Dominion and Empire troops) in the Ypres salient in Belgian Flanders aimed at spearing through the German defenders to the Belgian ports on the English Channel. To do so, Haig planned for a series of battles in the summer and autumn of 1917, each of which created a stepping stone to the next objective. The first of these stepping stones was a ridge line which was occupied by the enemy and overlooked the ground that was to be used for the build up of British forces. The ridge ran almost due south from a position just outside Ypres, where spoil from a railway cutting had been dumped (the famous Hill 60) towards the village of Messines and on to Warneton on the French border.
 
The preparations for the Battle of Messines were carefully planned. Large scale models of the terrain to be covered were constructed and all troops who were to take part, which included Walt and the rest of the 41stBattalion, were walked through the models to familiarize themselves with their objectives. The general in charge at Messines had three and a half million artillery shells at his disposal which would be fired in the days leading up to the attack. In addition, British and then Australian tunnellers had been undermining the Messines Ridge for almost 18 months and had placed underground charges in tunnels directly underneath the German defences.
 
On the night of 6th June 1917, the men of the 41st Battalion moved up to the start tapes which had been laid by the intelligence officers in preparation for the signal to commence the advance. At 3:10 am on the 7thJune 1917, 19 of the underground mines beneath the Messines Ridge were fired simultaneously. It was the largest man-made explosion in history (up until that time) and the noise was heard in London.
 
Two Australian Divisions were included in the order of battle for the attack at Messines. The 3rd Division AIF had responsibility for the northern sector of the front while the 4th Division was tasked with attacking the second line of German trenches behind the village of Messines itself. The 3rd Division’s advance was virtually flawless in its execution as the men rose up and advanced through the smoke and dust to secure their objectives.
 
Over the ensuing weeks, the German forces, although initially stunned by the explosions on 7th June, soon recovered and began a relentless artillery exchange in an attempt to regain the ground that they had lost. The 41st battalion had been rotated in and out of the front line positions for almost two months when it was reported that Walt Andrews had been killed in action on 31st July 1917. He had almost certainly been the victim of an artillery shell, as most casualties at Messines were. There is a hand written note in Walter’s file which states “Buried 200 yards NW Messines.” The normal procedure was that burial parties would mark the graves of those who had been buried on the battlefield with a wooden cross. Many of those graves, including that of Walter Andrews, were destroyed by the constant shelling as the battles in the Ypres salient moved back and forth across the low lying ground between Passchendaele and Messines.
 
Walter Andrews is among the 54,000 British and Dominion men who lost their lives in Belgium during the conflict and have no known grave. They are commemorated on the tablets of the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres where each evening, the citizens of the city commemorate the sacrifice of those young men with a ceremony which concludes with the recitation of the Ode and playing of the Last Post.
 
Walter’s parents received a parcel of his personal effects and the balance of his Commonwealth Bank Account at the Albion Branch in Brisbane.