Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
# 5441 NEWMAN Edward                  9th Battalion
 
Ed Newman was born in Ipswich. The Newman family was living at Coominya at the time and no doubt the relatively easy train journey to Ipswich presented a safer option for Ed’s mother, Eliza. It is likely that Ed attended school at Coominya.
 
Ed presented himself for enlistment at the Brisbane Recruiting Depot in Adelaide Street on 8th November 1915. He stated his age as 27 years and occupation as teamster. It is likely that Ed worked a bullock team carting logs to the sawmills that dotted the towns along the Brisbane Valley Rail Line. His brother Patrick enlisted from Blackbutt and Ed is listed on the War memorials at Blackbutt and Nanango, both timber industry towns.
 
It is also likely that while working in the Esk district, Ed met a Miss Ellen Hemstedt with whom he fathered a child, described in the official records as ex-nuptial. Their son, Edward who was born in July 1914, was under the care of the State Children’s Department as apparently Ellen Hemstedt had given her son up to the authorities, no doubt in order to avoid embarrassment to her family, who were quite well known in the Esk district. Young Edward’s surname was recorded on his birth certificate as Hemstead, a common practice for the time for people with Germanic surnames. No father is recorded on the birth certificate.
 
Ed reported to the camp at Enoggera where he was drafted into the 17th draft of reinforcements for the 9thInfantry Battalion. The reinforcements took a train to Sydney and then embarked on the “Hawkes Bay” for the voyage to England on 20th April 1916. Ed spent some time in the 3rd Brigade training Battalion at Perham Downs on Salisbury Plain before being shipped to France, where the 9th Battalion, as part of the 3rdBrigade of the 1st Division of the AIF, was engaged in the first major battle on the western front for the Australians at Pozieres.
 
Ed was taken on strength by the 9th on 13th August, after the 3rd Brigade had been relieved on the Somme and relocated to the Ypres salient. Ed spent from the 4th September to 19th September on traffic duty while the rest of the battalion was involved in cleaning and repairing equipment prior to inspection by Brigadier Sinclair McLagan. After returning to his battalion, Ed was charged with being drunk on 26th October and was given 24 hours in shackles. In November, with winter setting in, the AIF moved back to the Somme to hold the line during a particularly difficult period of frost, snow, freezing temperatures and illness. On 30thNovember, Ed reported to a casualty clearing station complaining of rheumatism. He was transported by ambulance train to the Canadian Hospital at Etaples two days later. When his condition did not improve, Ed was loaded onto a hospital ship and admitted to the #1 South General Hospital in London on New Year’s Day 1917 with bronchitis.
 
Ed remained in hospital until 23rd March whereupon he was granted a two week furlough before reporting to Perham Downs. Ed overstayed his furlough by two days and was charged with being AWL. He was fined 3 day’s pay and confined to camp for 7 days. Ed was moved on from Perham Downs to Wareham where he was placed in the 69th Battalion; a battalion part of a short lived 6th Infantry Division, which was eventually disbanded due to a lack of manpower. During his time at Wareham Barracks, Ed was charged with brawling on 15th September and was fined 10 day’s pay. In early October, Ed was finally on the move back to the war. On the 15th October, Ed arrived in the depot at Havre and marched in to the 9th Battalion lines at Poperinghe on 20th October 1917. He had been away in England for 11 months and his level of training had probably suffered.
 
The British Forces, supported by the Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders, had been prosecuting a major offensive in Belgian Flanders during the latter half of 1917 with the objective of driving back the German line from the Ypres salient. The 3rd Battle of Ypres, as the entire campaign was officially named, began in June at Messines and then progressed eastwards along the Menin Road from the ruined city of Ypres towards the village of Passchendaele. When Ed joined the 9th Battalion on 20th October, the British Line had stalled just short of the village of Passchendaele, primarily due to incessant rain which turned the entire battlefield into a quagmire that swallowed men, animals and equipment.
 
The 9th Battalion was called up to relieve another battalion from the 3rd Brigade in the front line opposite a blockhouse named Assyria on 31st October. The battalion war diary records that the battalion had three companies in the front line with a fourth company providing carrying parties to move up ammunition, food, water and wire. Edward Newman was reported Killed in Action on 2nd November 1917; almost certainly by artillery shell targeting carrying parties. The war diary reported that for the period in the front line, casualties were “Light” with 23 wounded and 4 killed; one of whom was ED Newman.
 
There is no burial report for Ed and it can be concluded that any remains, if located at all, were unidentifiable. Ed Newman is among the 54,000 soldiers of Britain and the Dominions, 6000 of whom are Australians, who lost their lives in Belgium during the conflict and have no known grave. The missing are commemorated on the tablets of the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres where each evening since the construction of the memorial in 1928, the citizens of the city commemorate the sacrifice of those young men with a ceremony which concludes with the recitation of the Ode and playing of the Last Post.
 
The Australian war artist Will Longstaff painted a poignant depiction of the Menin Gate; “Menin Gate at Midnight.” This painting toured the nation throughout the 1920s and 30s to wide acclaim and was particularly well received by the families of the 6,000 Australians listed there. The painting is now a prized exhibit in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
 
Ed’s son, Edward Hemstead who was only three years old, was granted a war pension of one pound per fortnight. The pension was paid to the Queensland Children’s Department for the care of young Edward. The Department also accepted in trust Ed Newman’s service medals. Ed Newman’s brother, Thomas of Kumbia, was the main beneficiary of Ed’s will.