Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
# 642A  NEISLER (Also NIESLER) George  13th Machine Gun Company / 44th Infantry Battalion
 
George Neisler was born at Maryborough to Carl Adolf and Caroline Neisler. There seem to be two alternative spelling of his surname and even family members would appear to have used both. According to his father, George attended Degilbo State School.
 
At the time of his enlistment, George was living in the Wowan district about 80 kilometres from Rockhampton where he was farming. He presented himself for enlistment in Rockhampton on 15th September 1916. He was 23 years old and single. George travelled by train to Brisbane where he was placed in a depot battalion at Enoggera. On 5th October George was allocated to an infantry reinforcement echelon but on 12 December he was posted as reinforcement for the machine gun sections training at Lytton.
 
In January 1917, George was transferred to the Machine Gun School of Instruction at Seymour on the outskirts of Melbourne. George would spend the next four months learning the operation and handling of the Vickers Heavy Machine Gun. The Vickers required a team of up to six men to transport, deploy, arm and fire. As well as the gun itself, there was a heavy tripod for mounting, a water tank and couplings to cool the barrel jacket, metal boxes of .303 ammunition, spare barrels and tools. In some cases, the team would pull a small limber which contained all of the above.
 
While stationed at Seymour, George struck up an acquaintance with Miss Rita Russell of Richmond. Miss Russell became a frequent correspondent after George was deployed overseas. On 11th May 1917, George and the other reinforcements for the 13th Machine Gun Company embarked on the “Ascanius” in Port Melbourne. The embarkation roll indicates that George had allocated 3/- of his daily pay to his parents in Degilbo.
 
The reinforcements landed in Devonport Docks in Plymouth, England on 20th July and travelled by train to the 13th Training Battalion at Codford Barracks on Salisbury Plain. The gunners continued to train on the ranges at Codford for the next four months while the 3rd Battle of Ypres, sometimes referred to as Passchendaele, raged across the English Channel in Belgian Flanders. In September, George was promoted to Acting Corporal.
 
The battles in Belgium had brought about a change in strategy as far as heavy machine guns were concerned. The machine gun companies were disbanded in favour of placing gun crews directly with the infantry they were to support. Additionally, the greater availability of an alternative to the heavy Vickers; the Lewis gun, provided a far more flexible option. As a consequence, the reinforcements for the 13th MG Coy, were added to the pool of reinforcement for the infantry. In December, George boarded a cross channel ferry in Southampton for Rouelles. On 10th December 1917, George was taken on strength by the 44th Infantry Battalion.
 
The 44th Battalion was part of the 11th brigade of the 3rd Australian Division. There were two Queensland Battalions in the Brigade, the 41st and 42nd, but the 44th Had originally been a West Australian battalion. After the failure of the Flanders campaign at Broodseinde Ridge and Passchendaele at the end of 1917, the exhausted Australian Divisions were withdrawn from the front and put into comfortable billets for the winter.
 
Throughout the winter of 1917/18, the general consensus of the British Commanders was that a large German attack would occur in the spring of 1918 and would be directed at the Ypres salient. In anticipation of an assault in Belgium, The British Commander, Douglas Haig, positioned his best fighting force, the AIF, in a position to meet the threat. This was where the 44th Battalion was positioned when George joined their ranks.
 
The German assault, codenamed Operation Michael, began on the 21st March 1918; aimed not the Belgian front but along the valley of the Somme River which was the arbitrary demarcation between the British and French Armies. The German storm troops rushed headlong at the weak British 5th Army which broke in the face of the advance. There was a real possibility that if the German advance could capture the important communication hub of Amiens, the British and French forces would be split and the Germans could wheel south to envelop Paris and win the war.
 
Faced with collapse of the 5th Army, Haig ordered that brigades of the 3rd and 4th Australian Divisions be rushed south to establish a line to defend Amiens. The 11th Brigade under the command of Queenslander General Cannan, began a journey south from Steenvordt to take up position in the triangle formed by the confluence of the Somme and Ancre Rivers. The Brigade war diary records that during the journey south, the battalions encountered French refugees fleeing in the face of the “Bosche”, as well as British soldiers who had broken and fled also.
 
When the 44th Battalion and the other three battalions of the brigade arrived at their defensive positions between Heilly and Sailly-le-Sec on 24th March, less than 20 kilometres from Amiens, the situation was desperate. There were no trenches save for some overgrown and collapsed fortifications left over from the French.
 
With the arrival of the Australians into the Defence of Amiens, the Germans concentrated their efforts on the south bank of the Somme with the intention of taking the heights above the village of Villers Bretonneux, which placed their artillery within range of Amiens. Throughout April, elements of the 3rd and 4th Divisions held defensive positions astride the Somme. On 9th April, General Douglas Haig issued his famous “backs to the wall” speech in which he emphasised the serious of the situation and the importance of holding the position at all cost.
 
On 25th April, after a concerted attempt by the Germans to capture and hold Villers Bretonneux, two brigades of Australians surrounded the village and threw the invaders back. The German advance was spent; it would go no further, and Amiens was saved. Throughout May and June of 1918, the Australian forces on the Somme continued to man the defences while their new Corps Commander, Lieutenant General John Monash encouraged a tactic of peaceful penetration in which active patrolling of no man’s land and trench raiding unsettled the enemy.
 
Monash’s forces were troubled by the German occupation of a high point on a ridge above the hamlet of Hamel, from which German artillery held a commanding position across a shallow valley between Hamel and Villers Bretonneux. Monash spent June planning a small operation to remove the German observers from the ridge at a point called The Wolfsberg.
His plan was to employ Australian infantry, supported by the latest model of British tanks, and backed up by aircraft from the Australian Flying Corps and the Australian Field Artillery.
A regiment of US troops were in training nearby and Monash suggested that it would be a good idea to attached a company of “doughboys” to each of his battalions. To make the idea even more appealing, Monash chose the 4th July, American Independence Day, as the day of the attack. A company of the Illinois National Guard was attached to the 44th Battalion and there is a photograph in the Australian War Memorial collection of men from the 44th and American servicemen in a trench at Hamel.
 
As a prelude to the attack, Monash had his artillery bombard the German positions each morning for a week with a mixture of high explosive and gas. The defenders would retreat to their shelters until the bombardment was over and then reappear in the defensive line.
On the day of the attack, the gas was dispensed with and replaced with coloured smoke.
To disguise the noise of the tanks moving into position, aircraft flew over the Wolfsberg at low altitude. At 4:00 am, the 11th brigade began its assault. As the troops moved up the slope under the artillery umbrella, US Serviceman Thomas Pope knocked out a machine gun post and so won the first Medal of Honour awarded for the first world war. Tanks cleared the way for the 44th to advance and 93 minutes after the commencement (Monash planned it would take 90 minutes), the battle was over with all objectives reached.
 
Hamel was a textbook victory but it did come at some cost. Australian casualties amounted to 1200, most of whom were wounded but there were fatalities, one of whom was George Niesler. George’s body was removed from the battlefield and buried just outside Villers Bretonneux in what would become the Crucifix Corner British Cemetery.
 
Miss Rita Russell was informed in a letter of George’s death by another 44th battalion man and she wrote to the authorities to find Carl and Caroline’s address so that she could send the letter on to them. George’s estate was handled by a solicitor’s firm in Brisbane and George’s brother Charles, who was farming at Gootchie Creek between Gympie and Tiaro was granted the whole of George’s estate.
 
In 1925, Caroline wrote rather belatedly to the authorities in Melbourne enquiring about George’s deferred pay and the possibility of a war pension. She was directed to contact the Military paymaster in Brisbane. There is no record of the outcome.