Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
#3110 BELLINGHAM Allan Percy                   58th Battalion
Allan Bellingham was born at Dalby to parents William and Rebecca Bellingham. The family lived in the Malakoff district between Dalby and Bell and young Allen attended school at Malakoff. After leaving school, Allen may have worked on the family farm before beginning as an apprentice jockey with a trainer by the name of Blacklock from Dalby. He told the recruiting officers that he was apprenticed for six years. Once licensed, Allen would appear to have moved to Eastern Victoria where he could work as a jockey.
After the casualty lists began to appear in newspapers as a result of the AIF’s involvement at Fromelles and Pozieres on the Western Front in July and August 1916, enlistment numbers in Australia began a steep decline. To make up for the 23,000 killed or wounded in the four AIF divisions during the Somme campaign, the Australian Government was under pressure to introduce conscription. A plebiscite to gauge public opinion was held on 28th October 1916. The day before the vote, which was narrowly defeated, Allen Bellingham walked in to the recruitment centre at Warragul, Victoria.
Allen advised the recruiting officer that he was living on the Cann River in far eastern Gippsland near the border with NSW. Heading towards Melbourne to enlist, Warragul was the first recruiting centre he came to. He also advised that he had been refused enlistment previously due to bad teeth, a common occurrence when recruiting numbers were high. Allen advised the recruiters that he was 23 years old and stated his occupation as jockey. He named his father, William Bellingham of Malakoff via Dalby, as his next of kin.
Allen was given his enlistment papers and a rail warrant to report to camp at Royal Park in inner Melbourne where he was placed in a depot battalion before being allocated to the 8th draft of reinforcements for the 58thBattalion on 24th November 1916. Less than one month later, the reinforcements boarded the “Medic” at Port Melbourne on 16th December for overseas.
The reinforcements disembarked at Plymouth on 18th February 1917 and were taken by train to the 15thBrigade Training Battalion at Hurdcott. The 58th Battalion, which Allen and the other reinforcements would eventually join was, was part of the 15th Brigade of the 5th Division which had been raised in Egypt in April 1916. The 5th Division, and particularly the 15th Brigade, suffered appalling casualties at Fromelles in July 1916. It would take almost 12 months to rebuild the division into a fighting force.
The 8th reinforcements had had little time to be adequately trained before being deployed overseas and therefore, training in England was quite intense. On 28th March, Allen reported sick to the hospital at Sutton Veney. He was transferred to several more hospitals at Harefield and Weymouth before it was determined that he was suffering from a gastric ulcer. Allen was not discharged from hospital until June and he spent several months in convalescent camps before being sent to the 5th Division Signal School at Codford on 10th November where he was trained in the skills needed for signallers on the western front. On 4th January 1918, Allen was sent to the 4th Division Signal School perhaps as an instructor.
 
While Allen was in England, the strategic situation on both the Eastern and Western Fronts had changed. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia brought about the end to fighting on the Eastern Front. A peace treaty between Germany and Russia released up to sixty German divisions which, once re-equipped and re-trained, could be used to press home a distinct advantage on the Western Front. The window for exploiting this advantage was however rather small as the entry of the United States into the war and an expected surge in troop numbers from July 1918 onwards would swing the advantage back to the Entente. The German commander, Ludendorff had only a short time to press home his advantage.
 
The British Commander, General Haig, was fully expecting a German assault in the spring of 1918 but he guessed incorrectly that the main thrust would be aimed at the Ypres salient in Belgium. When Operation Michael began on 21st March 1918, the main assault was aimed along the line of the Somme River, the scene of so much fighting and hard-won victories in 1916.
The British 5th Army, which was holding the line astride the Somme was unable to hold the German onslaught which in some places amounted to a five times numerical advantage. As the British retreated, often in disarray, the German Stormtroopers retook all of the gains made by the British in the Somme campaign and were within a few days of capturing the vital communication city of Amiens. If Amiens fell, Haig might well have lost the war; the situation was deadly serious.
 
Haig ordered his most successful and battle-hardened troops, four of the five divisions of the AIF in Belgium to race south to establish a defensive line in front of Amiens. Allen Bellingham was swiftly ordered to proceed to Southampton ten days after Operation Michael began for a short ferry crossing to France. Allen marched in to the reserve lines of the 58th Battalion on 10th April. The following day, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig issued his famous order of the day in which he stated that “with our backs to the wall………each one of us must fight to the end.”
 
When Allen joined his battalion, the 58th was defending along the line of the Somme Canal in the village of Corbie to the east of Amiens. The battalion war diary records that extensive work was being done to dig trenches and establish forward posts which were linked to company and battalion headquarters by telephone. To avoid having the phone lines cut by enemy artillery, cables were often laid in a ladder like configuration which was then buried. Such work was by its very nature, inherently dangerous as the signallers were terribly exposed.
 
On 14th April, Allen Bellingham was severely wounded by a shrapnel burst, almost certainly while laying and burying cables. He was taken to the 41st Casualty Clearing Station with shrapnel wounds to his right arm, left leg, left hand and abdomen. In spite of the efforts of the nursing staff at the CCS, Allen died of his wounds the same day. He had been at the front for four days. Allen was buried in the Namps Au Val Cemetery south west of Amiens. His family chose the following inscription for his headstone: GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN HE WHO GAVE HIS LIFE FOR HIS COUNTRY.
 
The sister in charge of the CCS wrote to Allen’s mother to inform her of the circumstances of her son’s death. She mentioned in the letter that any of Allen’s personal effects would in due course be forwarded to the family. When no such parcel was forthcoming, Rebecca Bellingham wrote to the authorities in December 1918 enquiring about personal effects. She had not been informed that a parcel of Allen’s effects, a knife, scissors, photos and a notebook had been despatched on the “Barunga” for Australian ports. The “Barunga” was torpedoed by an enemy submarine off the Scilly Isles in July 1918 and although there was no loss of life, all cargo including the personal effects of some 5000 servicemen was lost.