Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
# 2391  McCABE John             47th Battalion
 
John McCabe enlisted in Wondai on 29th April 1915. He stated at the time that he had been born in Liverpool and named his mother, Mary Jane, of Shadwell Terrace Liverpool as his next of kin. John was a 31 year old labourer who probably worked in the Wondai area. His medical records note a large number of tattoos some of which refer to women he had probably known.
 
After signing on in Wondai, John reported to camp at Enoggera where he was placed in a depot battalion for initial training. He was reassigned as a reinforcement for the 15th battalion in June 1915. In July, John went AWL (absent without leave) from Enoggera. The reinforcements took a train to Sydney where they boarded the “Shropshire” on 20th August for the voyage to Egypt.
 
On 18th October, a number of reinforcements for the 15th Battalion boarded a ship in Alexandria and disembarked in Mudros Harbour of the island of Lemnos. Lemnos was the forward staging area for the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and was within a day’s sailing time of the beaches at Anzac Cove. The 15th battalion had been sent out of the line at Anzac and was in camp at Lemnos when John and the other reinforcements arrived. The 15th engaged in training and drills to accustom the reinforcements to battalion routines. At the end of the month, the 15th was sent back to Anzac but the reinforcements were placed in an isolation camp due to an outbreak of mumps. The reinforcements remained in isolation on Lemnos for several weeks before plans for the Anzac front changed. The Australians who had been clinging to the cliffs at Gallipoli for seven months were to be evacuated and the entire Mediterranean enterprise closed down. There was therefore no need to send reinforcements to the Anzac beachhead simply for them to be evacuated ten days later.
 
On 13th December, the bulk of the 15th battalion left Anzac Cove at night and joined the reinforcements in camp on Lemnos. On 29th December, the fully reinforced 15th battalion boarded a ship in Mudros Harbour and sailed to the Egyptian port of Alexandria and from there took a train to camp at Ismailia on the Suez Canal.
 
While in camp at Ismailia, John was charged with drunkenness and being absent twice. He was fined with loss of pay and restriction to camp. In March 1916, John was again absent and was fined 14 days pay and given 14 days of field punishment (defaulter was constrained in wrist cuffs for two hours each day). During the period of punishment, John again went AWL and on that occasion was given a loss of pay and 28 days in the detention barracks. Soon after release from detention, John reported on 10th April, to a field ambulance with a case of venereal disease. He was discharged a month later, by which time his battalion had already left Egypt and was taking up position on the western front in Northern France. John was transferred to the 47th Battalion, which had been created out of men from the 15th battalion and a company of Tasmanians. The 47th was part of the 12th Brigade of the 4th Division AIF
 
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.
 
The Battle of the Somme began in the Picardy Region of Northern France on 1st July 1916, which resulted in 60,000 British 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 12th Brigade of the 4th Division was put into the line at Pozieres to hold ground that had been won by the 1st and 2nd Divisions. 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. In total, the three AIF divisions suffered 23,000 casualties during July and August 1916.
 
After the 47th had been relieved at Mouquet Farm and had marched back to billets near Albert, John went AWL again. He was apprehended in the town and charged with drunkenness and insolence. His punishment was a loss of one month’s pay. In October, John reported to a field ambulance with breathing difficulties. He was sent to hospital at St Omer where he was diagnosed with pleurisy but this appears to have been amended to tuberculosis. John was sent to hospital in England where he was eventually diagnosed with bronchitis. He remained in hospitals and convalescent camps in England throughout the winter.
 
On the 13th January 1917, John was discharged from Hurdcott convalescent camp and given a two week furlough. John took advantage of this leave to travel to Liverpool where he may have visited family (it is uncertain if his mother was still alive) and married Elizabeth Curry, a Liverpool girl. When his furlough expired, and which he overstayed by two days, John reported to the 4th Division Training Battalion at Perham Downs near Salisbury. Perhaps bored with the routines of camp life, John went AWL again in May. He was apprehended by the provost corps in London and returned to Perham Downs where he spent 5 days in detention awaiting trial. The colonel in charge of the court awarded 5 days of field punishment and a loss of 15 day’s pay. Perhaps in a move to remove John from the temptations offered in England, he was shipped out to return to France on 20th June. After several days in transit, John marched in to the 47th Battalion lines on 8th July 1917.
 
The 47th was recovering from a 60% casualty rate inflicted at Messines in June while John was in England. He and a number of reinforcements arrived at the 47th over the months of July and August as the battalion rebuilt. The 3rd Battle of Ypres, of which Messines was the opening assault was waged by a series of small discrete actions, each new assault by the British building upon the success of the last. As the action moved forward from the outskirts of Ypres towards the Broodseinde Ridge, the battalions of the 12th Brigade acted in support at Menin Road and Polygon Wood. In the first week in October, Broodseinde Ridge was taken and it appeared to the British Commanders that they may have finally devised a strategy that could achieve that which they had been working for over the last three years; a breakthrough of the German lines.
 
This thinking may well have proved to be correct, if not for the rain. It began falling on the low Flanders countryside during the end of September and did not let up. The ground over which the British forces were advancing was low lying farmland which for centuries had been drained by a series of drains and channels. This same ground had been a battlefield from 1914 and the almost three years of artillery fire had created a moonscape dotted with shell craters which completely wrecked the drainage systems.
 
The 47th Battalion, in conjunction with the other three battalions in the brigade, began a slow slog up to the front line on 10th October with the objective of capturing the village of Passchendaele; a name that became synonymous with the hell of warfare. One of the most famous of war photographs from the war, taken probably by Frank Hurley, shows a group of Australians negotiating a duckboard track through a shattered, crater filled and flooded landscape. The mud sucked strength from men as they slogged up to the line, too exhausted from moving though trenches that contained mud that was at times waist deep. Men, animals, wagons and heavy guns sank in the mud and had to be abandoned.
 
It was obvious to anyone near the front that the rain had defeated the attackers; but the British Commander Haig ordered the assault to be pushed on. This was probably the most questioned decision of Haig’s during the entire war. Valiantly, the men of the 12th Brigade attempted to push home an attack on the 12th October but were unsuccessful. During this attack, John received a burst of machine gun fire to his abdomen and buttocks. He was carried out by overworked stretcher bearers under the cover of darkness to the light rail system that transported ammunition and material up to the front and wounded back to the casualty clearing stations around Poperinghe.
 
John was taken by the staff of the 17th Casualty Clearing Station at Lijssenthoek where he died of his wounds on 15th October 1917. He was 34 years old. Under the conditions of his will, John’s newly wed wife Elizabeth, received the balance of his deferred pay and war gratuity. She was also granted a war pension of two pounds a fortnight. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website shows that John’s name, rank and serial number are all that is recorded on his headstone in the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery.