Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Dennis McAULIFFE

Military Medal & Bar

Military Medal Recommendation

‘Though wounded arriving at the APEX (Gallipoli) and came away with machine gun section on night of the evacuation. Set a splendid example under trying conditions’.

This hand written recommendation for MM was written on June 9th, 1916 a full six months after the evacuation on December 19, 1915 from the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Bar to Military Medal Recommendation

'It was by his efforts that the Stokes Mortars were kept supplied with ammunition during the attack on POZIERES RIDGE on 4th/5th August, 1916. He conducted carrying parties, set a splendid example and showed ability in getting a number of carrying parties through heavy shell fire, up to the German trenches, where the Mortars had been established.'

Source: Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 14 December 1916 on page 3381 at position 12

The Bendigo Independent on February 3, 1917 proudly announced: -MILITARY MEDAL WON -Cpl. D. McAuliffe.

Mrs. Dack. of Elm Street, Golden Square, has received news that her youngest son, Cpl. D. McAuliffe, of the 7th Brigade Trench Mortar Battery, has been awarded the, military medal. He enlisted in Western Australia.[1]

However, the following month the same newspaper would publish this tragic news: - DIED OF WOUNDS. (referenced above) 

SERVICE DETAILS: 

Regimental No. 1130

Place of birth: Redesdale Victoria

Religion: Roman Catholic

Occupation: Miner

Address: Elm Street, Golden Square, Bendigo

Marital status: Single

Age at enlistment: 29

Next of kin: Mother, Mrs E Dack, Golden Square, Bendigo

Enlistment date: 24 May 1915, Kalgoolie

Unit name:28th Battalion, D Company, 7th Trench Mortar Battery

Embarked: From Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A11 Ascanius on 29 June 1915

Final Rank: Corporal

Fate: Died of wounds 12 March 1917

Age at death: 32

Place of burial: Dernacourt Communal Cemetery Extension (Plot VI, Row D, Grave No. I), France

POZIERES RIDGE - Pozieres / Mouquet Farm.

This series of actions elicited the greatest quantum of Australian sacrifice of any single campaign in our military history.  In five weeks of fighting in mid 1916, the Australian First, Second and Fourth Divisions sustained 23,000 casualties, 5,000 of whom were killed.The Battle of Pozieres was the toughest task faced by the AIF in the First World War.  The remains of thousands of Australians killed in the fighting were never found and still lie beneath the fields in this tiny corner of France.  Today Pozieres is a shrine to the bravery of the original Anzacs.[2]

Charles Bean's epitaph to the fallen is inscribed on a stone plinth at the site of the Windmill;                                                                "The ruin of Pozieres Windmill which lies here was the centre of the struggle in this part of the Somme battlefield in July and August 1916. It was captured on August 4 by Australian troops who fell more thickly on this ridge than on any other battlefield of the war"

(1) Bendigo Independent on February 3, 1917. Page 12
[2] Virtual War Memorial Australia Website – author of page –Steve Larkins. https://vwma.org.au/explore/campaigns/5

"KILLED IN ACTION. CORPORAL D. McAULIFFE. HOW HE DIED.

Mrs. E. Dack, or Elm street, Golden Square, has received the following letter regarding the death of her son in France; —

"France, 13th March.

Dear Madam. — Long ere this reaches you you will have received the bad news of the death of your son, Corporal Denis McAuliffe, and I am writing to you to express my deep sympathy, and to give you the particulars of his death. Early in the morning of the 11th March — at about 2 a.m. — your son had charge of a Stokes gun crew in the front line. The Germans were shelling heavily at the time, and the gun position was blown in, but by a miracle none of the crew were injured. The gun was then moved back to a safer place. Just after daylight we were again shelled badly, and a 5.9 H.E. shell burst in the trench right against your son, wounding him and two members of his crew. I had him carried to a dressing station immediately, where a doctor attended to him. He was badly cut about the back and lost a lot of blood, but no one realised he was fatally injured. He was quite cheerful, and gave me your address to write to you. Unfortunately next day— the 12th March— he died from shock. He had been properly buried, and his mates in the battery are putting a nice wooden cross over his grave. Your son was the best N.C.O. we had in the battery, and, as you know, he had won the Military Medal and a bar thereto. You will no doubt receive this in due course from the War Office. We will all miss him very much, and we sympathise deeply with you in your loss, — Yours, etc., (G. H. G. Smith. Lieut. P.S. — He was wounded at Valencourt, near Bapaume." - from the Bendigo Independent 28 May 1917 (nla.gov.au)

From Francois Berthout

Cpl 1130 Dennis Mc Auliffe MM+Bar
7th Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery

More than a hundred years ago, on the fields of the Somme, one after another, stood silently among the poppies, the white and immaculate rows of graves of thousands of young men who, far from home but on the sacred soils of France, of their adopted country, for peace and freedom, gave their all, their lives on the battlefields for their loved ones and for future generations who after so many years, never forget the courage and sacrifices of so many young Diggers who came from the other side of the world to liberate our country from darkness and from a war that broke our old France under the weight of smoking ruins but in Amiens, Pozieres, Villers-Bretonneux, names which still resonate with the bravery of the Australian soldiers and where were written in gold letters these few words which live every day in my heart "Do not forget Australia" and which accompany me during each of my visits to the graves of these young men to whom I owe so much and over whom I will always watch with the deepest respect so that their sacrifices are never forgotten, so that their names, so that the ANZAC spirit and the friendship which unites our two countries in remembrance live forever.

Today, it is with the utmost respect and with the deepest gratitude that I would like to honor the memory of one of these young men, of one of my boys of the Somme who came from Australia and who, in France, gave his today for our tomorrow.I would like to pay a very respectful tribute to Corporal number 1130 Dennis Mc Auliffe who fought in the 7th Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery and who died of his wounds 106 years ago, on March 12, 1917 at the age of 32 on the Somme front.

Dennis Mc Auliffe was born on December 28, 1885 in Redesdale, Victoria, Australia, and was the son of Cornelius Mc Auliffe and Elizabeth Dack (formerly Mc Auliffe), of Elm Street, Golden Square, Bendigo, Victoria. He was educated in Kangaroo Flat State School, Victoria and sadly lost his father when he was young but his mother later remarried, following which Dennis moved to Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, where he worked as a miner.

Dennis enlisted on May 24, 1915 at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, as a Private in the 28th Australian Infantry Battalion, D Company, 7th Brigade, 2nd Australian Division, and after a period of less than a month of training at Blackboy Hill Camp, pres from Perth, embarked with his unit from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A11 Ascanius on June 29, 1915 and sailed for Gallipoli where he arrived on September 4. Here, the 28th Battalion had a purely defensive role, protecting the perimeter of ANZAC. During the evacuation of the peninsula on December 19, Dennis left with the machine-gun section of his battalion, and was later commended for the Military Medal for his "splendid example under trying conditions".

In Gallipoli,many of the 2nd Division casualties were as a result of disease which was at its worst in the hotter months because of unsanitary conditions caused by field burials and difficulties in maintaining adequate standards of field hygiene. "Enteric Fever" is often referred to in soldiers records; it is interchangeable with the far more ominous-sounding "typhoid" and was an ongoing problem.

After the evacuation of Gallipoli on board Ansonia, Dennis arrived in Egypt on January 10, 1916 and was disembarked in Alexandria. Here he spent a period of time undergoing training before being sent to France, on the Western Front. Shortly after his arrival in Marseilles on March 21, 1916, he was detached for duty to the 7th Brigade Trench Mortar Battery. This suited him, apparently, and in May 1916 he was permanently transferred to the trench mortars. The following month he was promoted to Corporal.

Dennis’s first major action came during the fighting around the French village of Pozières,in the Somme. In early August, he was responsible for keeping the Stokes mortars supplied with ammunition during an operation that captured strong German trench works to the north-east of the village. This was no mean feat, as their position was under extremely heavy shell-fire, and Dennis conducted several carrying parties to and from the trench mortars’ forward position. As it was almost solely through his efforts that the Stokes Mortars had ammunition during the attack, he was later awarded the Military Medal. A Bar was awarded to his medal early the following year with the following citation:

"It was by his efforts that the Stokes Mortars were kept supplied with ammunition during the attack on Pozieres Ridge on 4th/5th August, 1916. He conducted carrying parties, set a splendid example and showed ability in getting a number of carrying parties through heavy shell fire, up to the German trenches, where the Mortars had been established."

Dennis spent the bitterly cold winter of 1916 and 1917 in rotation in and out of the front line with the infantry. In the early hours of 11 March 1917 he and his Stokes gun crew were in the front line near the French village of Bullecourt. The Germans shelled their position heavily, eventually striking close enough to blow in the gun position. Miraculously, none of the crew were wounded, and they quickly scrambled to move the gun to a safer position. Just after daylight another German bombardment came over, and this time a high explosive shell burst in the trench close to Dennis, wounding him and two members of his crew.

Immediately after this incident on the front line, Dennis was evacuated and admitted to the 45th Casualty Clearing Station at Dernancourt, in the Somme, suffering from shrapnel in his back but unfortunately he died the next day from his wounds on March 12, 1917, he was 32 years old.

Shortly after his death, Dennis' commanding officer, Lieutenant Smith, wrote the following letter to the young Corporal's mother:

"Dear Madam
Long ere this reaches you you will have received the bad news of the death of your son, Corporal Denis McAuliffe, and I am writing to you to express my deep sympathy, and to give you the particulars of his death. Early in the morning of the 11th March,at about 2 a.m.,your son had charge of a Stokes gun crew in the front line. The Germans were shelling heavily at the time, and the gun position was blown in, but by a miracle none of the crew were injured. The gun was then moved back to a safer place. Just after daylight we were again shelled badly, and a 5.9 H.E. shell burst in the trench right against your son, wounding him and two members of his crew. I had him carried to a dressing station immediately, where a doctor attended to him. He was badly cut about the back and lost a lot of blood, but no one realised he was fatally injured. He was quite cheerful, and gave me your address to write to you. Unfortunately next day, the 12th March, he died from shock. He had been properly buried, and his mates in the battery are putting a nice wooden cross over his grave. Your son was the best N.C.O. we had in the battery, and, as you know, he had won the Military Medal and a bar thereto. You will no doubt receive this in due course from the War Office. We will all miss him very much, and we sympathise deeply with you in your loss,
Yours, Lieutenant Smith."

Today, Corporal Dennis Mc Auliffe rests in peace with his friends, comrades and brothers in arms at Dernancourt Communal Cemetery Extension, Somme, and his grave bears the following inscription: "So sadly missed, so deeply mourned."

Dennis, young and brave, proud and loyal, it is with the greatest courage that for Australia you answered the call of duty and that you marched with your heads held high alongside your comrades to the overseas battlefields , towards the poppies of the Somme and the north of France to enter the front line that you bravely held alongside your French brothers in arms in the mud and blood of the martyred fields of Pozieres on which thousands of Diggers paid the supreme sacrifice when they were in the prime of their lives and in this ultimate test, with their friends, charged bayonets forward and were mowed down under the murderous artillery fire which spat upon them death and despair at a ruthless pace which transformed these once peaceful landscapes into mass graves, into abominable slaughterhouses which were the theaters of the deadliest battles of the great war.Young and determined, despite the storms of fire and steel they suffered, they never gave up and arms in hand, their knees deep in the mud, among the rats, in appalling conditions, tormented by hunger and thirst,they held their positions and saw in front of them, beyond the barbed wire, real fields of death on which men and horses lay lifeless, they saw in the bruised and charred trees, the bodies of their comrades who were blown away, swept away by the deflagrations of terrible explosions caused by endless rains of shells that thousands of guns fired ruthlessly and day and night, worked to bring in the hearts of these young men, despair in the face of these visions of apocalypse in this hell on earth which were the only youth and the only world that a whole generation of men knew but through these horrors, through this sadness, they knew how to remain united and strong by a bond of camaraderie that nothing broke, by the spirit of ANZAC which guided them to give the best of themselves in the face of the adversity and the inhumanity that the great war brought on the battlefields but in the heart of the trenches, these brave men among the bravest, always kept faith in the future and fought together with determination for the highest values which gathered them.Together, in a bond forged by brotherhood, they gave their hearts in what they did in the hearts of battles, they fought beyond their limits to make freedom prevail, to bring to the world, to their loved ones and to generations future the light of peace in a flame which they lit with their hopes and their dreams of a better world, a flame which they carried within them in those terrible hours of history but which, under the bullets, under the grenades, under the shells never died out and that they transmitted to us so that we remember them, so that we honor their memory but also to protect and preserve the peace for which they fought and fell, so that these words that they forcefully expressed "never again" guide us to try to make this world a better place every day by never forgetting the past, never forgetting the faces, the courage and the sacrifices of these men to whom we owe so much. Today, more than a hundred years after the Great War, the cannons, machine guns and rifles have fallen silent in the rust, the battlefields have become silent and peaceful, but the trenches, still visible but dotted with poppies, remind us what so many men did and lost here but who forever united will always stand tall and proud behind their white graves and over whom I will always watch with utmost respect to keep their memories strong and alive so that who they were, so that their names live forever. Thank you so much Dennis, for all that you and your comrades did for France which will never forget Australia whose spirit and Anzac spirit will live forever in the Somme.At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember him, we will remember them.

I would like, with the deepest respect and with all my heart, to thank the Australian War Memorial, Mrs Meleah Hampton and Virtual War Memorial Australia for their invaluable help without which I would not have been able to write this tribute.