Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 3616 PYE William Leslie                                                      31st Battalion
 
The only information available in the public records concerning Bill Pye is that contained in his attestation papers. He stated he was born in Wellington, New Zealand. By the age of 36, Bill was labouring in the Crows Nest district, perhaps at one of the sawmills in the area.
He presented himself to the Darling Downs Recruiting Depot in Toowoomba on 4th January 1916. Bill stated he was 36 years old; a labourer. He named his mother, Jane Gardiner of Coburg, Melbourne, as his next of kin.
 
Bill made his way to Enoggera where he was allocated into the 8th reinforcements of the 31st Battalion. Time was spent in training before embarking on the “Boorara” in Brisbane on 16th August 1916. Bill allocated 4/- of his daily pay of 5/- to be held in an Australian bank account. The reinforcements arrived in Plymouth, England, on 13th October and made their way to 8th Brigade Training Battalion. The 31st Battalion was part of the 8th Brigade of the 5th Division of the AIF. The division was only newly arrived on the Western Front in July 1916 when it was ordered into an attack against Auber’s Ridge and the village of Fromelles on 20th July. The attack was a failure and the 5th Division suffered over 5,000 casualties, effectively disabling the entire division. The 31st Battalion had its numbers reduced by over half due to enemy action, wounded or missing. The 31st, like other 5th Division units was taken out of frontline duties while the battalion gradually replaced its losses. Bill Pye was destined to be one of those replacements.
 
Bill embarked on a cross-channel ferry at Folkstone on 17th December 1916 and joined his unit for the first time nine days later. The winter of 1916/17 was one of the coldest on record and the Australians were exposed to snow and ice, freezing mud in the trenches and treacherous cobblestones on the French roads. Illnesses such as bronchitis, influenza and typhus were common. Bill had probably not fired his rifle or even seen the enemy before he reported sick to a casualty clearing station on 16th March 1917. He was diagnosed with rheumatism, a not uncommon complaint among rural workers exacerbated by exposure to the elements, and was evacuated by hospital ship to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley, Southampton. Bill was transferred to the Australian Hospital at Harefield on 30th April. On 17thMay, Bill was granted a two-week furlough after which he reported to the AIF Depot at Wareham. In June he was back, briefly, at the 8th Brigade Training Battalion at Codford before taking a ship from Southampton to France where he rejoined the 31st in the first week in August 1917.
 
With the exception of a few instances where units of the 5th Division acted as supports for some action, the division was kept out of front-line action while it recovered from the disasters of Fromelles. Bill rejoined the 31st at Racquinghem in Belgium where training continued. At the end of the month, the Commander of British (and Australian) Forces in France, Field Marshall Douglas Haig visited the 8th Brigade and inspected the battalions in a march past. Such a visit was often the prelude to a division going into action and the 5th Division would soon have a chance to prove that it was a viable fighting force again. In September, the 8th Brigade began to move up to the forward areas, arriving at the staging area near Steenvoorde on 17th September. On 21st, all companies that were to take part in the action at Polygon Wood were walked through a sand model of the ground and features they would encounter. While this briefing was underway, two other divisions of the AIF, the 1st and 2nd, attacked the Gheluvelt Plateau in the Battle of Menin Road, paving the way for the next phase of the battle, Polygon Wood.
 
On 25th September, the men of the 4th and 5th Divisions took up their positions on the start line with the 5th directly facing Polygon Wood. The main attack would be supported on the flanks by British regiments but as had occurred in many previous battles, the British soldiers were unable to keep up with the Australians and the 31st Battalion had to slow its advance to prevent the right flank being exposed. During the advance to the Flandern 1 trench, Private Bugden the 31st Battalion succeeded in knocking out a number of concrete pillboxes with his Lewis gun. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, posthumously. The successful attack on Polygon Wood under difficult circumstances was a great morale booster for the men of the 5th Division.
 
The taking of Polygon Wood opened up the battlefield for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Divisions AIF as well as the New Zealand Division to advance to the next objective on 4th October, the Broodseinde Ridge and the villages of Zonnebeke and the ultimate goal, Passchendaele. As the positions gained in the latest offensive were being consolidated, the situation in Flanders took a decided turn which ultimately broke the back of the British offensive and tarnished the reputation of Field Marshall Haig. The battlefield which stretched a little under eight miles (12 kilometres) from Ypres to Passchendaele was low lying boggy ground which prior to the war had been drained by dykes and canals to enable agriculture. From almost the first months of the war, the ground which became known as the Ypres salient was pounded by heavy artillery from both sides relentlessly, destroying the drainage system and churning the soft ground. As the battle of Broodseinde Ridge came to an end, relentless and unseasonal rains flooded the plain between Ypres and Zonnebeke, quickly turning it into a sea of cloying mud. Shell craters filled with water, roads and tracks had to be reinforced with corduroy surfaces of logs. Vehicles, heavy guns and animals became hopelessly bogged. Infantry wending their way through the mire on duckboard tracks stepped off the path at night; many were drowned under the 50 pounds of gear they carried; others had to be rescued by their mates. On average, it took about seven hours for men to make their way through thigh and sometimes wait deep mud to the front line. They arrived totally exhausted and fed up.
 
In the span of a week, the successful campaign that had begun at Menin Road was hopelessly bogged down. Haig, indifferent to the situation his men faced, ordered the assault on Passchendaele to continue at great cost in lives and earning Haig the reputation of a butcher. Into these shocking conditions, the 31st Battalion was ordered back into the line near Zonnebeke. On 21st October, it was recorded that private Bill Pye was killed in action. He was purportedly buried in the mud near the Zonnebeke Railway Station, but by whom is unknown. A small parcel of Bill’s personal effects; wallet, photos and cards, and a leave pass, were despatched to his mother. The parcel was forwarded onto a number of different addresses as Mrs Gardiner moved location.
 
At the conclusion of the war, Graves Registration Units began the search for isolated graves which could be consolidated into war cemeteries; the largest of which is Tyne Cot on the edge of Passchendaele. Tyne Cot is the resting place of over 12,000 bodies recovered from the surrounding battlefields, many of which have never been identified. Around the western edge of Tyne Cot are limestone panels listing 35,000 British and New Zealand servicemen who lost their lives between July and November 1917, and have no known grave.
 
Bill Pye’s remains were never identified. He is one of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave. Their names are inscribed on the Portland Stone Tablets under the arches of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in the city of Ypres. As a mark of respect to the Australians who gave their lives, the city of Ypres donated the pair of stone lions that had guarded the Menin Gate to the Australian government. The lions now guard the entrance of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
Since the 1930s, with a brief interval during the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign. The ceremony concludes with the laying of wreaths, the recitation of the ode, and the playing of the Last Post by the city’s bugle corps.