Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

From Francois Berthout

Pte 2868 James Daniel Richardson
42nd Australian Infantry Battalion,
11th Brigade, 3rd Australian Division, AIF
 
On this eve of ANZAC DAY, a new spring sun comes to light up the fields of the Somme across which, in peaceful waves sway red as blood, millions of poppies, eternal flowers of remembrance which keep in their hearts, the souls of thousands of young Diggers, so many brothers and friends who, coming from Australia, from the other side of the world, fought with bravery and determination on these sacred grounds in the north of France and who, for their country, for the men who stood by their side, did their duty with exceptional courage in the trenches in which so many tears and blood were shed during four years of a hell never seen before but that so many men then in the prime of their lives faced days and nights from the putrid quagmires and shattered by tons of shells at Pozieres in July 1916, the first battle fought in the Somme by the Australian Imperial Force who, in seven weeks of fury, of pain, lost 23,000 men then, still standing, holding strong even when bruised, continued to fight alongside their French brothers in Flers, in Gueudecourt then in April 1918, more determined and strong than ever, united by an unwavering friendship, by a bond of camaraderie, stopped the Germans at Villers-Bretonneux, writing at the same time, in courage and blood, the legend of the ANZAC spirit which then led them to Amiens, a Franco-Australian city then in the last hours of the conflict, celebrated the victory at Vignacourt. In the Somme, the Australians were in all the battles which were among the deadliest but the price of peace was high and here, among the poppies, nearly 40,000 Diggers gave their lives. They were young, pride of an entire nation and rest today in peace on the soil of a friendly country which will be forever grateful to them and today, more than ever, I am honored and proud to watch over them, to put a face, a story on their names, to keep their memory alive so that they are never forgotten, so that these silent heroes can 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, one of my boys of the Somme who, for Australia and France, for our tomorrow, gave his life.I would like to pay a very respectful tribute to Private number 2868 James Daniel Richardson who fought in the 42nd Australian Infantry Battalion, 11th Brigade, 3rd Australian Division of the Australian Imperial Force, and who was killed in action 106 years ago, on April 24, 1918 at the age of 26 on the Somme front.

James Daniel Richardson was born in 1892 in Hodgson, Queensland, Australia, and was the son of Lewis and Elizabeth Ann Richardson, of Camisla, Drillham, Queensland where James had a peaceful childhood and after his schooling, worked as a farmer until the outbreak of the war.

Deeply patriotic and driven by a strong sense of camaraderie and duty, James enlisted on September 29, 1916 at Miles, Queensland, in the 42nd Australian Infantry Battalion, 6th Reinforcement, which was raised at Enoggera, on the outskirts of Brisbane, in December 1915 under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Woolcock and became part of the 11th Brigade of the 3rd Australian Division. Due to sharing its numeric title with the famous Scottish regiment the Black Watch, the battalion became known as the "Australian Black Watch". This association was recognized with a bagpipe band. After a training period of just over three months at Enoggera Camp, James embarked with his unit from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A64 Demosthenes on 23 December 1916 and sailed for England where he arrived on March 3, 1917 in Plymouth and joined the 11th Training Battalion on March 6 then after a new period of intensive training in realistic war conditions on Salisbury Plain, proceeded overseas for France from Southampton on July 16.

On July 17, 1917, after a peaceful journey on the Channel, lulled by the foam and the swaying of the waves, James arrived in France and was disembarked at Rouelles, near Le Havre where he joined the 3rd Australian Divisional Base Depot, marched out to unit on August 2 and was taken on strength on the field in the 42nd Battalion on August 4 at "Woodlands Farm Hutments" near Messines, Belgium. Less than a week later, on August 8, they moved to "Waterlands Farm Camp", near Ypres and followed a period of training there but were also involved in numerous working parties then on August 22, were sent by train to Remilly-Wirquin, in Pas-De-Calais (northern France ) where they remained until September 24.

On September 25, 1917, James and the men of the 42nd Battalion left Remilly-Wirquin and marched through Blaringhem, Eecke and arrived in billets in Poperinge, Belgium and were regularly bombarded by enemy artillery as well as German airplanes which caused some casualties then on October 3, moved to Ypres and headed to an assembly position at Zonnebeke where the battalion, on the night of October 3-4, led an attack to capture a portion of the enemy line called the "Red Line", a key objective as part of the battle of Broodseinde which began on October 4.

Broodseinde Ridge was part of the Passchendaele Offensive,a "bite and hold" strategy employed by the Allies after three years of fighting on the Western Front.The attack consisted of 12 Allied divisions (three Australian, one New Zealand and eight British) against 10 German divisions.It was a chilly 16C that morning, with a misty drizzle falling from the grey sky. It had been raining for several days and the ground was a sodden, muddy quagmire. Another 5mm of rain would fall on the day of the battle.The Germans had the high ground and had prepared and planned an attack for the same time and place as the Allies. Correspondents Charles Bean and Keith Murdoch were also present to watch the attack.

Using the cover of darkness, the Australians moved to their hop-off trench and were in position in no-man’s land by about midnight. Here they waited.The German artillery barrage began at about 5.20am and by 5.30am it had intensified to become a heavy bombardment. What the Allied army did not know was that the Germans were about to attack Zonnebeke, where the Australian 2nd Division were positioned.

Most of the German barrage fell onto the 1st and 2nd Divisions. At this point, Bean guessed they lost a seventh of the men, including those killed or wounded. The barrage lasted about 15 minutes.By 5.45am there were lines of Germans advancing towards the Allied positions. One Australian officer wrote that the Australian losses were so great from the German artillery that they were glad they could get going.When the sun rose at 6am, the Allies followed behind their artillery,slipping and sliding in the mud and bomb craters,as the barrage crept forward towards the German lines.

They walked about 90 metres before lines of Germans emerged out of the chilly mist, walking towards them with fixed bayonets. The Germans shot and then retreated, with the Allies in hot pursuit, following them back to their positions.

They reached the first objective,called the red line positions on the battle map,between 6.45am and 7.20am. They were supposed to wait there until 8.10am, but they kept up the momentum and moved forward to the final blue line objective, not wanting to give the Germans time to set up their defensive positions.As the Australians approached, the Germans opened fire with their whizzbang 77mm artillery rounds. They did so from atop defensive positions on multiple pill boxes, machine gun posts and barbed wired entanglements still in place from the Allied bombardment.

With the cover of darkness now gone, it was about teamwork, brains, speed and probably some bloody mindedness. The Lewis machine gunners fired at the German machine gunners to make them duck their heads down, allowing other men to get close enough to put grenades into the German pillboxes and flush them out.The Australians achieved their final objectives by mid-morning, when they consolidated their new positions. During the day, the Germans counter attacked fiercely with men and artillery, but the Australians held on.

In April 1918, the positions would unfortunately be retaken by the Germans, only to return to the Allies in September 1918. Such is the ebb and flow of the tides of war. As a result of the battle, two Australians were awarded Victoria Cross medals, Lewis McGee (buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery) of the 40th Battalion and Walter Peeler of the 3rd Battalion. Seven British soldiers were also awarded VCs for their actions on that day.

Australia suffered a total of 6,432 casualties,1,279 killed and 5,153 wounded.German history refers to the battle as "the black day of October 4", while on the other hand, Australian history tells us it was an overwhelming success because it achieved all its military objectives.What is not widely known, however, is that numerically the battle for Broodseinde Ridge is the single worst day in Australia’s military history.
To compare it to other notable battles, 751 people died at ANZAC Cove and almost 2,000 died as a result of the battle of Fromelles,both on the day and in the days that followed,making Fromelles the deadliest battle in Australian history.

On October 4, 1917, with great courage, James and the men of the 42nd Battalion took the "Red Line" and captured 100 German prisoners as well as nine machine guns but the losses were heavy. During the day, the 42nd Battalion lost 220 men then, exhausted, moved on October 6 to St Lawrence Camp in Brandhoek for a period of rest which was more than appreciated and which allowed the battalion to reorganize and receive reinforcements then on October 22, moved back into billets to Remilly-Wirquin with a strength of 608 men who underwent another period of intensive training.

On November 12, 1917, James and the units of the 42nd left Remilly-Wirquin and moved to Boeseghem and from there marched to La Becque and reached Kortepyp, in Belgium on November 15 then, in reserve between the Lys and Douve rivers followed a period of training of three and a half hours each morning followed by two hours of recreation in the afternoon, these times generally consisted of inter-company football matches and even had a friendly competition against the 41st Battalion and the 7th Australian Artillery Brigade which joined them on the 25th November then on December 7, marched for Tilques (Pas-De-Calais) where they followed numerous exercises including musketry exercises and bayonet fights, which kept the men of the 42nd in a very high fighting spirit.

On December 16, 1917, the men of the 42nd Battalion left Tilques and moved to "Birr Barrack Hutments" in Locre then to "Waterlands Farm Camp" in La Menegate. During the night of December 20 to 21 they entered the trenches of Bois-Grenier from where they relieved the 16th Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers then were employed to build numerous firing positions supported by strong points defended by machine guns which aimed to prevent any attempted enemy attacks in this sector.To complete this defense system, the 44th Battalion was placed in the second line, just behind the positions of the 42nd and were ready to repel any attack that the Germans would launch and which would result in catastrophic losses. A little later, this support was reinforced by the arrival of the 35th Australian Infantry Battalion on their left flank and the 113th Brigade of the British Expeditionary Force on their right. The enemy regiments standing opposite the positions held by the 42nd Battalions were the 4th German Guards Reserve and the 113th Landsturm who had very good shelters buried very deeply and which were protected from Australian artillery but no action was launched on either side of the front and on December 27, James and his comrades moved back to rest at "Waterlands Farm Camp" then to "Birr Barracks Camp 2" in Locre on December 31 and remained there until January 26, 1918.

On January 27, 1918, James and the units of the 42nd left Locre and moved back to Kortepyp Camp then the next day marched to Ingersoll Camp where they were employed in working parties and then had to follow a training period again. On February 5, they joined the front in the sector of the place called "Pont Rouge", a rather calm sector but it was only the silence before the storm which came from the German army the following month and on March 21, with implacable ferocity , launched under a rain of shells their last offensive of the war called "spring offensive" or "operation Michael".

Operation Michael was the first of several German large-scale attacks made against the Allied line on the northern part of the Western Front in the spring of 1918.

With 72 German divisions in positions ready to attack in three waves, thousands of infantrymen from three German Armies (Seventeenth, Second and Eighteenth Armies) left the German Front Line after a five hour artillery bombardment by over 6,600 artillery pieces. Some 3.2 million shells were destined to land on the British-held front during that first day of the attack. To the German's advantage there was fog in the Somme battlefield sector, enabling the infantry to appear in the British forward positions without being seen to have left their German trenches.

The southern part of the British front held by the British Fifth Army was successfully broken by the German Eighteenth Army and the left wing of the German Second Army. The German troops advanced through the British Battle Zone in the forward area of the British Front Line. In a change to the original plan, General Ludendorff decided to reinforce the sector of the attack on Operation Michael's left wing which was reported to be making good progress.

On 24 March the long range, 256 ton German gun called "Kaiser Wilhelmgeschütz" fired its first shells from the Forest of Coucy. With a range of 75-80 miles the shell reached Paris. There were three of these huge railway mounted guns in the forest; the breech blew off when the second gun was fired. The third gun began firing towards Paris on 29 March.

The German advance by the three armies continued during the few days after 21 March, but gradually the troops began to tire, having been on the move without relief for four days. Added to this, the supply of food, equipment, ammunition and horse fodder became problemmatic the further the infantry advanced ahead of their supply columns. The ground over which they were advancing was cratered with shell holes, roads were badly damaged and the villages they passed through were wrecked. Ironically, the German Army had been responsible for causing deliberate damage to this area when it made a withdrawal to the Siegfriedstellung (called the Hindenberg Line by the British) in the early months of 1917. The wilful destruction included poisoning of wells.

By 29 March the Germans had captured several key Allied-held towns on the Somme battlefield: Péronne, Ham, Noyon, Roye, Montdidier, Albert and Bapaume. The loss of the latter two was especially bitter for the British, given that they had struggled through the summer of 1916 to advance to Bapaume and many thousands of lives had been lost to capture this town. Within a few days in March of 1918 the ground was once more in German hands.

On 30 March General Ludendorff issued orders that the next phase of the German offensive, Operation Georgette in Flanders, would be carried out and artillery was to begin moving from the rear of the Operation Michael area to Flanders for the artillery's preparatory bombardment. The next day, 31 March 1918, General Ludendorff chose to rest the troops fighting in the Somme sector for a couple of days with a view to resuming the advance of Operation Michael. However, by 4 March the French Army had begun to reinforce its positions with extra reserves to hold back the German Eighteenth Army south of the Somme river. American troops were beginning to arrive on the battlefront. The British and Australian forces put up a successful defence at the village of Villers-Bretonneux against units of the German Second Army. Strong Allied counter-attacks prevented further progress by the Germans to the city of Amiens. Some German commanders now considered that Germany's last chance to strike a decisive blow against the British had passed. The shortages of reserves, ammunition and horses made it impossible to consider launching another offensive in this sector on such a large-scale. On the evening of 5 April General Ludendorff sent out a message to say that Operation Michael was terminated.

Although the Germans had gained over 1,000 square miles of Allied-held territory in a few days, the casualties suffered by the Germans is recorded as 31,000 killed, 20,000 missing and 190,000 wounded. The German offensive resulted in 160,000 Allied casualties killed or wounded and 90,000 men taken prisoner. By the end of Operation Michael the German troops were generally dispirited and disorganized.

On March 27, 1918, to stop the German offensive, James and the men of the 42nd Battalion were sent to the Somme and arrived in Amiens then joined the front line in the Vaux-Sur-Somme sector and waited firmly for the Germans troops who at this precise moment were on the Corbie-Bray Road. Immediately the Australians consolidated their positions and waited then patrols were carried out and on May 28, five Germans were spotted. They were ordered to surrender but they opened fire on the Diggers. This first contact was followed by an intense bombardment of the positions held by the men of the 42nd who, despite this shock, held the front line with great courage but continued to be subjected to enemy artillery fire which caused heavy losses then on March 31, they took position at Sailly-Le-Sec, north of the River Somme and repelled several German attacks who suffered severe losses then were relieved on April 1 by the 44th Australian Infantry Battalion and marched in bivouacs north of Vaux-Sur-Somme before returning to the trenches of Sailly-Le-Sec on April 19.

Unfortunately, it was in Sailly-Le-Sec that James met his fate. On April 24, 1918, the Germans, using explosive shells and gas shells, unleashed their artillery on the trenches of the 42nd and James who were trying to take shelter in a dugout was instantly killed by a shell which fell next to him. He was 26 years old.

Today, James Daniel Richardson rests in peace alongside his friends, comrades and brothers in arms at the Bonnay Communal Cemetery Extension, Somme, and his grave bears the following inscription: "Lost from all our sights but not from memory dear."

James, on this day of peace that we can live thanks to you, it is with gratitude that we remember you who, more than a hundred years ago, under the Australian sun, answered the call of duty to do your part, to do what was right alongside your friends who with you, marched determinedly towards the battlefields of France and singing, proudly followed the drums and bagpipes which guided them towards their destinies, towards The darkness of days filled with uncertainty and fear but pushed forward by a strong spirit of community, camaraderie and the desire to fight, they joined the distraught and tortured trenches of the Somme which day and night, under the shells, transformed into a veritable hell on earth on which death, desolation and despair mercilessly rained down which made the fields and green valleys once so peaceful disappear. Here, on these execution grounds, the young Australian soldiers fought with bravery and on many occasions, during the craziest and deadliest battles of the war, had to go over the top again and again under hails of shrapnel and were swept away by rains of bullets spat out at an implacable pace by machine guns providing flesh and blood, weapons of death which, manufactured at an industrial pace, sent thousands of young boys towards death and who, in this nightmare, lost their innocence at the sight of terrible horrors, at the sight of their friends who fell alongside them. They were so young but already incredibly brave under these firestorms which shattered their hopes of a great adventure, their hopes of a glory of which they heard so much during their training and, behind the parapets, at the face of barbed wire, facing death with faith and courage, they fought not for glory or medals but for the men, the friends and the brothers who stood by their side and who suffered shoulder to shoulder.Together they were stronger than anything and in this bond of fraternity, wrote the legend of the ANZAC spirit which was born on the bloody beaches of Gallipoli then which guided them in the mud of Fromelles, in the bloodbaths of the Somme, under the rain of Passchendaele and here, in Amiens, in Villers-Bretonneux and Pozieres, the Diggers showed the strength, the determination and the courage not of an army but of an entire nation whose daughters and sons served with heroism in the hospitals, in the air, at sea and on land from 1915 to 1918 without ever complaining about their appalling living conditions on the front, without ever backing down when the whistles broke the silence in the trenches, without ever asking why under the bullets and the shells but they knew that from their courage and their sacrifices a better world would be reborn and that from the ashes a new hope of peace and freedom would be born and like lions, it was for these values that the young Australian soldiers fought, that they gave their lives and shed their blood on the poppies which still bear the memory of these heroes, so many of whom rest today in peace on these sacred grounds on which stand, solemn, their eternal white graves in front of which I will always stand with the deepest respect to honor the memory of these men, the sons of France, my boys of the Somme whose memory I will keep alive and strong so that today and tomorrow, their names can live forever. Thank you so much James, for everything you and so many other young men like you did for us and for my country whose gratitude, love and respect will forever be yours in the light of remembrance. At the going down of the sun and in the morning,we will remember him,we will remember them.