Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Arthur Alva Gray served in both the South African (Boer) War and WW1 (twice). He first served as a Private S.N. 92 in the 4th Queensland Imperial Bushmen, Boer War. At commencement of WW1 he enlisted in 1914 serving as a Private S.N. 80 in the 2nd Infantry Battalion, Naval and Military Forces, Tropical Force in PNG. His unit was furloughed in 1915 and he re-enlisted in 1916 serving as  a Sapper S.N. 3605 in the 1st Tunnelling Company AIF during which he was killed in action while serving in Belgium.

Arthur Alva Gray was born in 1876 at Hill End in NSW. At the time of his enlistment in 1900 for the Boer War it appears his family had moved to the Nanango area in Qld where they were farming. He married Ada Maud Cecil on 13 Aug 1902 and had two children, a son and a daughter while living in Didcot, Qld where they were farming.

(sources- AWM Boer War Nominal Roll, Murray p. 481; National Archives Australia- Boer War Dossier and WW1 service records; Australian Boer War Memorial Database).

Arthur Gray was born in the NSW Goldfields town of Hill End near Bathurst circa 1877. The family moved to Rosevale, south of Rosewood in the Fassifern Valley, in time for Arthur’s younger brother, David, to be born at Rosevale. Both boys attended school at Rosevale.
 
In 1900, Arthur volunteered as part of the 4th Queensland Contingent for the South African War. When he returned to Queensland in 1902, he gave an address in Nanango. When the 1st World War broke out in August 1914, the British government requested that Australia mount an expeditionary force to secure German possessions in German New Guinea and the Western Pacific, particularly the wireless station at Rabaul which provided radio communication to Admiral Graf von Spee’s East Asia squadron. An initial force of 2,000 men comprising army volunteers and Naval reservists, designated the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force, was raised in Sydney and sailed to Rabaul where the radio equipment was seized and the German garrison imprisoned. The ANMEF was not part of the AIF, which was being raised at the same time for duty abroad.
 
A further force, given the designation Tropical Force, was raised in December of 1914 to act as an occupation force in the seized territories. Arthur Gray enlisted in Maryborough on 15th December and was allocated to the 2nd Tropical Force. He gave his age as 38 years and 4 months and advised that he had served for 18 months in the Queensland Mounted Rifles, a forerunner to the Light Horse. Arthur stated his occupation as farmer of “Carinya” Didcot via Gayndah. He also advised that he was married to Ada Maud Gray, of the same address. Arthur named Ada as his next of kin. Upon embarkation for new Guinea on 25thJanuary 1915, Arthur allocated four shillings of his daily pay of five shillings to his wife Ada and his children Lillian and John.
 
Life in the occupation forces was probably not what Arthur had expected. There was little military activity and time passed slowly. Arthur was granted a furlough back to Australia on the anniversary of his enlistment and after probably a short home visit, he presented himself for enlistment in the AIF to the Army recruiting depot at Adelaide Street in Brisbane on 21st January 1916. Arthur stated his age as 38 years and 5 months, which is not consistent with his claim that he was 38 and 4 months a year earlier. It is possible that he was not really sure of his age anyway.
 
Arthur’s details regarding address and family remained unchanged. He spent some time in a depot battalion at Enoggera before being posted to the engineers’ school at Liverpool in Sydney where he was allocated to the newly created tunnelling battalion, an odd choice for a mature aged man with mounted experience. The Tunnelling Battalion was raised as a direct response to the effectiveness of offensive mining on both the Western Front and at Gallipoli. Men were drawn from the mining areas such as Mount Morgan and Charters Towers. Officers were selected on the basis that they had mining operational experience or management skills. In order to fulfill the requirements laid down, the restriction on age which at that time excluded men over the age of 38 from the AIF, was relaxed.
 
Defensive and offensive mining or tunnelling had been part of siege warfare for centuries. The development of modern explosives such as ammonal and gun cotton allowed for offensive mines to be used as weapons against fixed defences such as trenches and dugouts with greater effectiveness. Additionally, mining operations provided one of the few opportunities to progress a war which had otherwise reached a stalemate where neither side could advance.
 
Arthur boarded the “Warilda” in Sydney on 22nd May 1916 and landed at Plymouth on 18th July. The tunnellers were marched out to the Australian training camp at Perham Downs and a month later crossed the English Channel to the large British transit camp at Etaples on the French coast. The months of July and August 1916 were busy times for the British forces in France. The huge Somme offensive which General Douglas Haig was convinced would lead to a breakthrough began on 1st July with 20,000 British conscripts dead and a further 40,000 wounded, all on the first day. The authorities were more concerned with reinforcing the infantry and had little time to ponder how a small battalion of tunnellers and miners could be useful.
 
In October 1916, the 1st Australian Tunnelling Battalion was broken up into three companies. Arthur was placed in the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company and was then attached to the 1st Canadian Tunnelling Company to learn the business of mining and tunnelling on the Ypres salient in Belgium. On 1st December 1916, the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company took over responsibilities for the Berlin Tunnel (so named because the sappers who built it said it was so long it would go all the way to Berlin) and two huge underground caches of explosives positioned directly under the German front line on the Messines Ridge. Hill 60; so named on the maps because it was 60 feet above sea level, and the Caterpillar were formed from spoil created when a cutting on the Ypres to Comines rail line was dug in the 1850’s. The high points were excellent vantage points to observe and harass the British on the flat lands to the south of Ypres.
 
The two mines, Hill 60 and the Caterpillar, had been dug and then charged with explosives well before the Australians arrived. The tunnellers job was to protect the two mines from German tunnelling by means of aggressive countermining. The Germans also were countermining and each side employed passive listening equipment to locate the other side’s tunnelling which were then destroyed by small explosive charges called camouflets. The work was highly stressful with the company divided into two sections that worked eight days on and eight days rest. When working, a sapper worked three four hour shifts in each 24 hours. The entire length of the Messines Ridge was spiked with 22 mines positioned under the German defences. The plan was to blow all the mines together once all had been completed and other plans for an infantry assault to coincide with the big blast had been finalised.
 
The difficulty that the tunnellers at Hill 60 and the Caterpillar faced was that their cache of explosives had been in place for several months before the Australians arrived, and would need to be babysat for several more months before the big day. Water seeping out of the clay in the tunnels could render the mines useless so the explosives were packed in petrol tins that had been sealed with pitch and primed with electric detonators. The detonators and the electric circuits had to be constantly tested.
 
On 25th April 1917 (Anzac Day) Arthur Gray and seven other sappers who had just come off shift were resting in a dugout when there was an explosion. Captain Avery, a mining engineer from Brisbane, was testing a group of detonators placed in a fifty pound box of gun cotton when one of the detonators fired. The subsequent explosion destroyed the dugout and killed all those inside; Captain Avery, two lieutenants and eight sappers.
 
The remains of the 11 killed were transported to the Railway Dugouts Burial Ground at Zillebeke where a full burial service was conducted. Arthur’s wife Ada was granted a pension of 2 pounds a fortnight and his daughter Lillian received one pound a fortnight and son John received 15 shillings a fortnight. Ada received a parcel of her husband’s personal effects which included a prayerbook, a tobacco pouch and a sewing kit referred to as a housewife. When permanent headstones were erected over the graves at the Railway Dugouts, Ada chose the following:
 
IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF OUR NOBLE HUSBAND AND FATHER
 
The mines at Hill 60 and the Caterpillar were blown along with 17 other mines on 7th June 1917. The explosions were so powerful that their effects were felt in London. The craters caused by the mines at Hill 60 and the Caterpillar still exist today. Hill 60 is the site of the memorial to the 27 men of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company who lost their lives in the tunnels below. In 2010, the motion picture “Beneath Hill 60” was released. It details the work of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company at Messines.