Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

#4512 HIGMAN Walter Arthur Horace
 
Walter Higman was born at Orange NSW to parents Edward and Anne Higman. His mother reported that Walter attended both a public school and a state school, suggesting that the family relocated to Queensland while Walter was still of school age. By the time of Walter’s enlistment, the family was living at “Kia-Ora”, Wondai. There is some evidence that Anne Higman, who sometimes went by her middle name Jane, was a nurse and may have been nursing in Wondai.
 
Walter travelled to Brisbane where he enlisted on 4th September 1915. He gave his age as 19 years and stated his occupation as carpenter. Walter named his mother as next of kin. After originally being taken on by a depot battalion training unit at Enoggera, Walter was allocated to the 14th reinforcements for the 9thBattalion. He embarked on the ‘Wandilla’ in Brisbane on 31st January 1916 and disembarked in Egypt on 5thMarch.
 
By the time of the 14th reinforcements’ arrival in Egypt, most battalions in the expanded AIF were up to strength and men such as Walter were surplus to requirements. Walter’s record indicates that on 5th April he was appointed E.D.P. Corporal (extra duty pay) and was placed on a list of men to go to England to be part of the establishing cohort for a new division, the 3rd Division AIF to be commanded by Major General John Monash.
 
Walter’s appointment to England was changed three weeks later and he was transferred to the 47th Infantry Battalion which was part of the garrison on the Suez Canal. The 47th was part of the 12th Brigade of the 4thDivision AIF. The battalion was initially made up Queenslanders who had transferred from the 15th Battalion and one company of Tasmanians.
 
As one of the last remaining battalions in Egypt as the AIF departed for the western front, the 47th took on men from other units who had been left behind for disciplinary reasons, and men discharged from VD wards. Unfortunately, the leadership provided by the senior officers was below standard, particularly when they disgraced themselves by becoming excessively drunk during the crossing of the Mediterranean. Company Sergeant Major Koch had to be carried ashore at Marseilles after drinking himself senseless. He was dismissed from the army forthwith. Intemperance and ill-discipline, while not widespread through the ordinary ranks, caused acute embarrassment amongst senior AIF officers once the 47th arrived in France. Those issues would remain until the entire leadership of the 47th was replaced in May 1917.
 
The Battle of the Somme began in the Picardy Region of Northern France on 1st July 1916. Unfortunately, the standard of planning employed by Haig’s staff let the new recruits down badly; 60,000 casualties on the first day alone, of which 20,000 were killed. The Somme campaign continued to struggle to gain territory in spite of the loss of life and by the end of July, Haig called on three divisions of Australians to take the village of Pozieres which sat on the highest point of a gentle ridge on the Albert to Bapaume Road. The 12thBrigade of the 4th Division was put into the line at Pozieres to hold ground that had been won by the 1st and 2nd Divisions. As the men moved up to relieve exhausted comrades, Walter was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. The 47th was forced to endure an artillery barrage by heavy howitzers which the survivors described as the heaviest they experienced during the entire war. Many men were sent down to the casualty clearing stations suffering from shell shock. The 47th’s ordeal was not over though as after a short rest in the reserve lines, the battalion was put back into the line a little further north of Pozieres at Mouquet Farm. The 47th was badly led and badly mauled at Mouquet Farm.
 
Walter received a gunshot wound to his left knee on 31st August and had to be evacuated to a casualty clearing station and then to the 3rd Stationary Hospital at Rouen. He spent the next six weeks recovering in hospital and then in a convalescent camp at Havre before being posted back to his battalion on 17thOctober. When Walter returned, he found that the Battalion Commander had been sacked due to his performance at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm. The new commanding officer had been badly wounded at Gallipoli and the rigours of command proved to be too much for him also. He was discharged medically unfit after Bullecourt.
 
The winter of 1916/17 was particularly bitter and the Australians on the Somme front fought freezing temperatures, frostbite, trench foot and influenza. There was little military activity. In the spring of 1917, the British forces on the Somme fwere surprised when the Germans began a strategic withdrawal eastward to preprepared defences consisting of belts of barbed wire, concrete gun emplacements (pillboxes) and a series of trench lines with dugout shelters; the formidable Hindenburg Line. The 47th, in company with the other three battalions in the 12th Brigade cautiously followed the Germans coming up to the Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt in April.
 
In a battle plan which the Australian historian, Charles Bean, described as having as much chance of success as a plan to capture the moon; the men of the 47th moved off from the jumping off tapes across snow covered ground without artillery support on 4th April 1917. Against incredible firepower, a few platoons of men actually reached the first line of enemy trenches but were cut off and had to retreat. The dark running figures on the snowy ground made excellent targets. Walter was fortunate to have survived a major battle unscathed.
 
Bullecourt put an end to the Somme campaign and British planners shifted their focus to Belgium and the Ypres salient. The Ypres campaign consisted of a series of small discrete engagements with limited objectives which could act as a springboard for the next assault; the so called “bite and hold “strategy. The planning for the campaign was a great improvement on the staff work evident on the Somme.
 
The first battle of the Ypres campaign was directed at the Messines Ridge, a spur of high ground which the Germans had occupied since 1915 and which gave commanding views of the ground below on which the British forces were situated. The battle began on 7th June 1917 with the exploding of 19 mines which had been placed in tunnels under the German positions. The explosions were so loud that the noise could be heard as far away as London. The explosions were also the signal for a massive artillery bombardment by the British and Dominion gunners who would fire over three million shells in total.
 
Once the smoke and dust cleared, infantry rose up out of trenches and advanced across the shattered ground to establish a new forward position. Subsequent advances by British, New Zealand and Australian battalions pushed the new front line out even further. The 47th Battalion was tasked with such a manoeuvre later in the afternoon by which time the enemy had recovered from the initial shock of the underground mines. The battalion reached and held its objective, the Oosstaverne Line and Owl trench late in the afternoon of the 7th June.
 
Walter’s file records that he was wounded while occupying a forward post on the 8th June when a machine gun bullet shattered his lower face and jaw. Walter was taken to the 2nd Casualty Clearing Station but he died of his wounds that same day. He was only a few weeks short of his 21st birthday. The sister in charge of the CCS wrote to Walter’s mother, Nurse Higman, to relay some details of Walter’s death.
Walter was buried in a cemetery at Bailleul which at the end of the war became the Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension. Ann Higman was granted a pension of two pounds, twelve shillings and threepence on the basis that she was by that time a widow. A parcel of personal effects which included identity discs, cigarette case and lighter as well as cards letters and photos was despatched to Wondai.
 
Anne Higman moved to the Sandown Hospital in Southport where she received her son’s medals. She chose as the inscription on Walter’s headstone: HIS DUTY NOBLY DONE