Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Frederick John ARNOLD died on Sunday the 1st September 1918, during the battle to take Mont St Quentin on the Western Front in France. Fred's original grave was described as being "In (a) trench near ruined house, just west of Mont St Quentin, and 1 mile north of Peronne." His body was exhumed in 1919 and re-interred at Peronne Cemetery a short distance away.

Letters written home to John ARNOLD indicate that Fred was seriously wounded "early on Saturday morning the 31st August, 1918". This would indicate that Fred was hit shortly after the Battle of Mont St Quentin began. Soldiers of the 5th Brigade, 2nd Division AIF attacked the hill of Mont St Quentin at 5AM that day, on a cold and foggy morning. Fred was wounded at the beginning of the battle and lay where he fell until the following Sunday when he eventually died, "His right shoulder and side were shattered by a shell". Soldiers who helped bury Fred after he died told John Arnold that Fred, “could not be moved owing to the intensity of the fire.” It is known that the Germans counter attacked Mont St Quentin after it was initially seized that Saturday morning. It was retaken by the 6th Brigade later that day.

Frederick was wounded twice before his eventual death at Mont St Quentin. He was seriously wounded in November of 1916, during the Major British offensive on the Somme River, also known as "The Great Somme Battle ". Fred first joined the 19th Battalion on the 14th November, 1916 as part of their 13th Reinforcement. It was near a small village called Flers, North of Delville Wood and near the River Ancre in Northern France . At 6.45AM that same day, the Battalion - along with the 25th and 26th Battalions from the 7th Brigade - attacked "Gird" and "Gird Support" trenches which were bordered on both sides by two sunken roadways called "Blue Cut" and "Yellow Cut". The two 7th Brigade battalions were still exhausted and under-strength from a previous attack on the 5th November. The three battalions attacked in conditions that the Official War Correspondent Charles BEAN described as, "Some of the worst ever encountered by the A.I.F". The Ancre River and surrounding plains were heavily flooded during the battle, hence Charles Bean's description. This is indicated in one of Fred's letters to his father that he was wounded, "fighting in mud up to his waist".

The fighting was severe and there were mixed results. The 26th Battalion was subsequently ordered to attack a series of trenches southeast of the " Gird" line called "The Maze". They were reinforced by the 20th Battalion, who were previously held in reserve. Although the attack was successful, there was a substantial gap between the "Gird" and "The Maze". This gap allowed Germans to creep back in. The 19th Battalion was successful in achieving their objective of Gird Trench. The soldiers followed a Creeping Barrage of British Artillery into the Battle and arrived at their objective "With the last shell" (as the German prisoners put it). Some Germans were caught by the Battalion still scurrying up from their dugouts after the artillery barrage, with machine guns in hand. They advanced towards Gird Support Trench However they were eventually beaten back by the Germans and failed. The 19th Battalion occupied Gird Trench for the whole day and into the night, fighting off fierce German counter-attacks on both flanks and from directly in front. They fought well into the early hours of the following morning. The official history by Charles BEAN reporting: "At 2.15AM on the 15th November, the Germans renewed the attack on the flanks (of the 19th), but were again repulsed. The Australians, then about 80 strong, without greatcoats (it was winter) or sheepskin vests, and fighting on their own initiative, with German rifles so that they could pass on all their own cartridges to the Lewis Guns- were still firmly in position at daybreak".

On 15th November, the 19th Battalion was relieved by three companies from the 28th Battalion. The 19th did not emerge unscathed, being badly cut up during the assault, Fred writing, "Out of the 700 who went over the parapet...only 83 returned" Fred's own writing appears to correspond with the Official History of "Eighty odd" survivors from the Battalion. Death tolls in battles of the Great War were often referred to `by the Hectare´. The official losses of the 3 Australian Battalions in this battle at Flers totalled 743 officers and men killed or wounded. The dead on the battlefield were strewn so thickly that the German Support troops, when later sent forward after the attack to relieve their own units, mistook the Australian dead for new forces lying out ready to attack.

The remnants of 19th Battalion were moved to a support area behind the lines known as "Carlton Trench Camp." The official history described the Trench Camps as being little better than the main front lines, stating, "The reserve
trenches were little better than the front line. The camps, now springing up in rear of the ridge, were ankle-deep or knee-deep in mud."

The Germans were renowned for firing artillery barrages, not only at the front lines, but also in the support areas. This was intended to reduce the morale of the soldiers. It was while Fred was resting with his battalion at Carlton Trench Camp that he was hit by shrapnel from a shell burst. His service record indicates he was wounded by gunshot (GSW) however his letters indicate he was hit by a shell fragment. (Most likely Fred was stretchered to an aid post and his severe wound was mistaken for a gunshot). After two operations, Surgeons removed a piece of shrapnel from Fred's chest that he later carried around with him for the remainder of the war. On his death it was posted to John. The Battles on the Ancre River at Flers ended on the 22nd November, 1916 and marked the 'official' end to the tragic series of military engagements on the Somme River which claimed more than a million men from both sides.

After he was sufficiently recovered from his wounds at Flers, Fred returned to the Western Front in October, 1917. He rejoined his battalion at Belgium only 1 day after the Allies successfully captured Passchendaele village. He was lucky enough to miss one of the most blood-soaked campaigns after The Somme - Flanders and third Ypres. The 2nd Division was tasked with holding the front lines in Belgium. The Germans counter-attacked in March, 1918 and the 2nd Division was pulled south to try and halt the German advance. On the 28th May, 1918 Fred was gassed while fighting the Germans near the River Aisne, one of the three main points of advance by the Germans.

Records at the Australia War Memorial describe the events during 1918; "German Spring Offensive" March 1918 - May 1918 This term relates to the three major German attacks on the Western Front in late March, April and May 1918, known collectively as the "Kaisers chlacht" (Kaiser's Battle). Using troops released from the Eastern Front, following the revolution and collapse of the Russian Armies in late 1917, the German general staff attempted to win the war before the Americans arrived in sufficient force to tip the strategic balance firmly in favour of the Allies.

The first German attack in March was launched against the British Fifth Army in Arras (Somme area); the second attack in April centred on Lys in Flanders, and the third offensive in May focused on the Aisne, where British Divisions, recuperating from the March attacks were again subjected to severe losses. Despite sweeping early gains in each of their attacks, German forces (which incurred huge casualties in their all-out attacks) outdistanced their supply lines and became themselves exhausted by the constant fighting. The final German advances were repulsed at the Marne in mid-June 1918, and the scene was set for the Allied counter-offensives of the summer. These counter offensives began in August of 1918 at Amiens.

Fred recovered from the effects of Gas and rejoined his unit on the 31st July, 1918. Fred took part in the massive retaliatory battles by the Allies against the Germans. He fought with the 5th Brigade at "Hangard Wood", 2000 yards south of Villers-Bretonneux, a battle during which several 19th Battalion officers were decorated for bravery. One man, Lieutenant STORKEY, was part of the 24th reinforcement and joined the Battalion at Flers at the same time as Fred in 1916. STORKEY received the Victoria Cross for his actions in overrunning a machine gun post in Hangard Wood, capturing about 20 German prisoners and killing about 30.
The 5th Brigade was then part of the massive allied offensive sweep from Amiens, North east to Albert and then east to Mont St Quentin where the 5th Brigade of 2nd Division was again instrumental in achieving what was described by General MONASH of the AIF as "One of the finest individual feats of the war”.

Fred never lived to know this, at 5.00AM on the 31st August 1918, the 19th Battalion "hopped the bags" to charge the terrified German Prussian Guards at Mont St Quentin. During the initial fighting, Fred and 7 other soldiers were in a trench just at the foot of Mont St Quentin. The trench took a direct hit from a German Trench Mortar or ``Minenwerfer´´ commonly known to the Allies as a ``Screaming Mini´´. The shell exploded in the trench. Fred was hit by shrapnel from the shell which "shattered his right shoulder and side". He told his comrades that he would pull through, however it appears that the German counter attack against the 5th Brigade forced Fred to remain on the battlefield until the hill was retaken by the 6th Brigade later that morning.

Fred was left on the battlefield too long, and bled to death where he fell on the 1st September , 1918. Fred and the other 7 men killed by the mortar shell were buried in the trench where they fell. They now lie side-by-side in Peronne Communal Cemetery.
Rest In Peace.