Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Herbert Charles Felstead SERN 505 & 1125

Suffering a serious gunshot wound to the left hand at Lone Pine in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign was not enough to deter Herbert Felstead from enlisting for a second time in the AIF.

Aged 22, and recently married, Herbert was quick out of the blocks to enlist on September 22, 1914. War had just been declared in early August.

He lists his home address as 13 Plumridge st, White Hills very close to the once rich alluvial gold fields on the Bendigo creek. He is married to Elizabeth Violet Heuston and their home is around the corner from his father’s house, in Raglan street.

Herbert lists his occupation as a motor mechanic and on this recruitment day in Bendigo, he is drafted into the newly formed 14th Battalion.

The Battalion recruits came principally from Melbourne and its northern suburbs, and the headquarters was at the Broadmeadows Camp where recruits were ‘taken on strength’ and trained. With the 13th, 15th and 16th Battalions, the 14th formed the 4th Brigade commanded by Colonel John Monash.   

Herbert along with the 14th battalion embarked for overseas on December 1914 from Port Melbourne in the second AIF convoy of 19 ships. After a brief stop in Albany, Western Australia, the convoy arrived in Egypt on 31 January 1915.

The 4th Brigade landed at ANZAC Cove on the afternoon of 25 April 1915. For the next two months they undertook defensive operations as the beachhead was established. Apart from a date his ship left Melbourne, there are no further entries for Herbert at Gallipoli until May 19,1915 when he evacuated back to Alexandria for treatment for Rheumatism.

After two weeks of treatment, he recovers and sails back to the treacherous Dardanelles shores on June 2.

One of the major battles of the Gallipoli campaign was the Battle of Lone Pine. Originally intended as a diversion from attempts by New Zealand and Australian units to force a breakout from the ANZAC perimeter on the heights of Chunuk Bair and Hill 971. The Lone Pine attack, launched by the 1st Brigade AIF in the late afternoon of 6 August 1915 pitched Australian forces against formidable entrenched Turkish positions, sections of which were securely roofed over with pine logs. In some instances the attackers had to break in through the roof of the trench systems in order to engage the defenders. The main Turkish trench was taken within 20 minutes of the initial charge but this was the prelude to 4 days of intense hand-to-hand fighting, resulting in over 2,000 Australian casualties. (source -AWM website, Lone Pine assault)

Although the 14th battalion is not listed as taking part in this assault we read in an article in the Bendigo Advertiser on April 1918 that Herbert was wounded at Lone Pine. His casualty record states he receives a bullet wound to the left hand on August 10, 1915, which is consistent with the dates of the four-day Lone Pine assault. He is treated on the hospital ship Gloucester Castle (see photo) and transferred to the British and AIF camp at Heliopolis in Egypt where he is admitted to the Number 3 Auxiliary hospital. Just two days later he is transferred to the base camp at Zeitoun for further convalescence.

The medical board determine Herbert’s wound will prevent him from taking any further part in the war and he is approved for medical discharge and sails for Australia on HMAT Ulysses from the Suez port on September 3, 1915.

He would disembark back in Melbourne in record time on September 20, 1915. Eight months later on June 1, 1916 after 589 days in the AIF he is discharged with the following reference –               Disability – GSW (Gun shot wound) of hand smashing 3rd and 4th metacarpal bones and two bones of left hand.

Herbert’s desire to get back in the action sees him enlist again just 6 months after being officially discharged. On December 18, 1916 he is re-attested, now aged 24, and given a new Service number of 1125.

He enlists this time in Chewton in Central Victoria where he was based as an engine driver. There is a report in the district papers that Herbert is also a Recruiting Sergeant in the Newstead area in addition to his new full time railway duties. He lists his wife as still living in Plumridge st, White Hills, Bendigo.

The medical examination at his Chewton enlistment records a scar on his left hand and operation scar on the abdomen. He height is measured at 5 feet, 4 inches, two inches shorter than at his 1914 medical examination!

With his new skill set as an engine driver, he is enlisted into the second section of the First Light Railway company which is sent to train at Royal Park Melbourne from December until mid February 1917 when the unit would embark for the western front.

The Victorian First Light Railway units depart on the troopship HMAT Ballarat A70 on February 19, 1917. After a long journey of nearly three months at sea the Ballarat is torpedoed just off the English coast on Anzac day, 1917.

According to a report in the Bendigo Advertiser in July of that year, Herbert’s brother-in-law Corporal William Joseph Heuston (SN 538) writes that all troops and crew were rescued after an orderly evacuation, which later saw the Ballarat go down 14 hours later.

Heuston writes “that after 9 weeks and three days at sea it was hard to get a smack on Anzac day (April 25,1917) at 2pm.  At 4pm we were all off”

With only the clothes they were wearing the Railway men are landed at Devonport naval barracks on the Cornish coast, South west England. According to AIF Railway historians, the unit would then head to the Royal Engineers' Railway Training Centre at Longmoor, staying at the nearby Bordon Army Camp.

Herbert and his unit would proceed overseas to France from the port of Southampton arriving May 30, 1917.

Locomotive drivers and engineers from the light railway operating companies performed admirable service by bringing supplies of war material from the standard gauge railheads up to the forward lines.

Earlier in February 1917 Anzac Corps engineers opened the Albert-Posieres-Le Sars main road to traffic but estimated that it would require 2,500 tonnes of road metal per mile to keep it open, whereas only 300 tonnes were on hand.

Anzac Light Railways, a new unit formed on 28 December 1916 to operate and maintain the tramways, were increasingly important form of transport in the forward area, set to work extending the network. By May 1917 the Anzac Light Railways was hauling 558 tonnes daily. (source - https://sites.google.com/site/archoevidence/home/ww1-victorian-railways-unit)

While the steam locomotives hauled supplies from the railheads, haulage to the forward lines was done by petrol locomotives that took over from the steam locomotives at distribution points some distance behind the front. In forward areas, steam locomotives were far too visible to enemy observation (steam and smoke by day and glowing fire by night). Even the petrol locomotives did not extend their operations right to the front lines. Hand worked ‘trench tramways’ served here.  (source - https://sites.google.com/site/archoevidence/home/ww1-victorian-railways-unit)

Rheumatism that afflicted Herbert in the Dardanelles campaign would come back to plague him again in France and he is hospitalised a number of times in November 1917.

Yet another legacy of his time on the Gallipoli peninsula would come back to impede his service. In January 1918 he is hospitalised again in France because of the wound to his left hand suffered at Lone Pine back in 1915. In early February he is back at the AIF base in Harve and by the mid month he is conveyed back to England for further treatment, this time to a hospital in Weymouth on the South coast of England.

Herbert’s service would be over for a second time. He is discharged as medically unfit with the same wound that’s sent home two years earlier. He leaves England on April 21,1918, on board HMAT Suevic (A29) nearly to the year after arriving in England.

After a six and half week sea voyage Sgt Herbert Felstead would disembark in Melbourne on June 6, 1918. He would be discharged from the AIF on August 30.

The Bendigo Independent newspaper reported the following in October 1918 –

‘The White Hills Public Hall was crowded to the utmost capacity on Saturday night when a public welcome was accorded Private J.S Pocock and Sergeant H.C Felstead…..

Sergeant Felstead was presented with a medal from the residents of White Hills. On the front had the initials of the recipient, the date of his return and the word ‘ANZAC’.

After enlisting twice and seeing first hand the horrors of war on two fronts, the Dardenelles and the Western front, Herbert Charles Felstead in 1942 at the age of fifty would apply to join the Australian Air force for service in World War Two. At the time the air force requested his WW1 military record from the Base Records Office, which were supplied, however, it appears Herbert may not have been successful enlisting a third time.

Sergeant Herbert Charles is remembered by the people of White Hills. The names of the local lads who sacrificed their lives and those that were fortunate to return from the Great War are shown on the embossed copper plaques on the White Hills Arch of Triumph, at the entrance to the Botanic Gardens.