Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
#2801 CROSS Laurence (Lawrence)               41st Battalion / 25th Machine Gun Company
 
Laurence Cross was born at Laidley on 20th February 1895 to John and Sarah Cross. The family, which included an elder brother John, moved into the South Burnett in time for both boys to attend school at Kingaroy. The Cross family farmed a block on Booie Road near Kingaroy and named the property “La Mascotte”, perhaps after a popular comic opera of the time. From photographs uploaded to the VWMA website which show Laurence and John in working attire, it is clear that the boys worked on the farm once they had left school.
John and Laurence may have both attempted to enlist in October 1915. John was accepted but Laurence was rejected as a result of a varicocele; an enlargement of a vein in the scrotum often caused by heavy manual labour such as farming. News reached the Cross family in August 1916 that John was missing in action at Pozieres and this event may have spurred Laurence to attempt to enlist for a second time.
Instead of going to Brisbane, Laurence chose to take the train from Kingaroy to Gympie and then on to Maryborough where he was accepted into the AIF on 6th November 1916. Laurence stated he was 21years on 8 months old. He named his father, John Cross of “La Mascotte” Kingaroy as his next of kin. Laurence was given a rail warrant to travel from Maryborough to Brisbane and then on to the camp at Enoggera where he was placed in a depot battalion.
While at Enoggera, Laurence was granted six days leave to return to Kingaroy to arrange for someone to take over his corn crop. Upon his return to barracks, he was drafted into the 6th reinforcements of the 41stBattalion on 26th November. Once assembled, the reinforcements journeyed to Sydney by train where they boarded the “Demosthenes” on 23rd December 1916. The voyage to England took two months and during the voyage, Laurence was briefly hospitalised in the ship’s hospital with a case of syphilis.
The reinforcements landed at Plymouth on 3rd March 1917 and proceeded to the 11th Brigade Training Depot on Salisbury Plain. It is likely that Laurence was able to meet his aunt, Alice Cross, while stationed in England. On 15th June, Laurence was transferred to the Machine Gun Corps Depot at Grantham where he began training as a member of a Vickers Machine Gun Team.
The Vickers was an extremely reliable weapon but which required a gun team of eight or more to move, sight, load and fire. The gun and its component parts which included a heavy cast iron stand, cooling water tank, belts of ammunition, spare barrels and tools was transported in a wagon pulled by a horse team or in closer situations a handcart pulled by the gunners. The Vickers had been designed to be used as a static defensive weapon and was too cumbersome to support the type of infantry advances that were required for the Flanders campaign of 1917. However, it was soon realised that placing a number of guns in a battery, similar to artillery, could produce a hail of bullets which could be used during an attack, much like the hail of arrows favoured in medieval battles. To achieve such an effect, the number and size of machine gun companies would need to be increased.
On 15th August 1917, Laurence Cross was transferred into the 25th Machine Gun Company, one of a number of new units being raised to support the coming campaign in Belgium. The 25th MG Coy, comprising four batteries of four guns each proceeded to the Southampton docks on 7th September 1917 and after a night crossing of the English Channel to Havre, moved north into the staging areas to the rear of Ypres in preparation the first of a number of “bite and hold” engagements which collectively became known as the 3rdBattle of Ypres, or Passchendaele.
The 25th MG Coy was part of the 5th Divisional Reserve for the Battle of Menin Road on 20th September but all 16 guns were included for the Battle of Polygon Wood a week later. The company manned the SOS line for 4 days before being withdrawn to reorganise for another attack by the 2nd Division AIF against Broodseinde Ridge and the village of Zonnebeke on 4th October.
By a sheer stroke of coincidence, the German defenders planned a counterattack for the exact same time that the Australian began moving up the slope of the ridge. When the 2nd Division troops saw the German infantry moving up the reverse slope, they called down a barrage by putting up SOS flares. The resulting machine gun barrage cut down the German infantry and the position was taken.
Once the new front line was established, a series of outposts were pushed out into no man’s land. Each post contained a Vickers Gun and a crew of three or four which had the task of keeping up an almost constant barrage or harassing fire, not aimed at anything in particular but designed to make the enemy wary. On 5thOctober, one of these outposts was hit by a German artillery high explosive shell, and three gunners were killed outright. One of those killed was Laurence Cross. He was still only 23 and had been at the front for nine days.
Inquiries made through the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Service by Laurence’s aunt, Alice Cross, established that Laurence had been buried on the battlefield near Zonnebeke. His grave was marked with a wooden cross.
Remarkably, Laurence’s grave remained intact and at the conclusion of the war, his remains were exhumed and reinterred at the nearby Tyne Cot Cemetery. Tyne Cot, located between Zonnebeke and Passchendaele in Belgian Flanders, is the largest Commonwealth War Cemetery in the world, containing 12,000 graves, of which 1,300 are Australian.

Lawrence Cross had only been in Belgium a few weeks with the 25th Machine Gun Company when he was killed by a shell. The same shell reportedly killed three other men of the unit.

His older brother, 4383 Pte. John Cross 26th Battalion AIF, had been killed in action at Pozieres on the 29 July 1916, aged 23. 

They were the sons of John and Sarah Cross, of Kingaroy, Queensland.