Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 2456A  JESSEN Christian (Christy) Johannsen   47th Battalion
 
Christy Jessen was one of four sons born to Andreus (Andrew) and Fredericka Jessen at Gympie on 5thMay 1892. Both parents were Danish immigrants who married in Queensland and engaged in farming in various districts. Christy’s mother died at Gundia when he was 8 years old and his father remarried and moved the family to Wooroolin where Christy and his younger brother, John (Jack), attended school.
 
After leaving school, Christy worked on the family farm and in 1912, married Ellen (Nellie) Moore who came from a farming family at Booyal on the Isis Branch Railway. Christy and Nellie settled at Wooroolin and in 1913, the first of their two sons, Ivor, was born.
Christy travelled to Brisbane to enlist on 22nd April 1916. He was 24 years old at the time and stated his occupation as farmer of Wooroolin. Christy nominated his wife, Nellie, as his next of kin. Once his enlistment was completed, Christy reported to the Rifle Range Camp at Enoggera where he was taken on by the 11thDepot Battalion for initial training. On 7th July, Christy was placed into the 5th reinforcements of the 52ndBattalion.
 
On 9th September 1916, Nellie Jessen gave birth to the couple’s second son, Lloyd. Ten days later, Christy embarked for overseas on the “Seang Choon” in Brisbane. The embarkation roll shows that Christy had allocated 4/- of his daily pay of 5/- to his wife.
 
The reinforcements landed in England at Plymouth on 9th December and were marched into the 13thTraining Battalion at Codford. While still in the barracks, Christy was hospitalised with mumps, a very common and infectious disease which was prevalent amongst new arrivals from Australia. Once recovered, Christy was shipped across the English Channel from Folkstone to the large British transit base at Etaples where he was reassigned as a reinforcement for the 47th Battalion, part of the 12th Brigade of the 4thDivision of the AIF. When Christy marched into the battalion lines on 18th March 1917, the 47th was in the rear areas on the Somme.
 
During the previous winter, the Germans had constructed a 150 kilometre long defensive barrier which stretched from Arras to Aisne and which they named the Seigfreid Position; but the British labelled the Hindenburg Line. The German forces which occupied the Somme battlefield began a strategic withdrawal to this new position and the British forces cautiously followed, taking the towns of Bapaume and Noreuil along the way. By the first week in April, elements of the 5th British Army under General Gough, which included two Australian divisions, came up against the Hindenburg defences at Bullecourt.
 
Gough was under orders to attack the Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt with his infantry, following which the cavalry would be put into the breech. Gough planned to use the battalions of the 4th and 12th Infantry Brigades of the AIF as his spearhead. Christy, still with no experience of actual warfare, and the rest of the 47th Battalion moved up to the assembly areas on the 8th April. Gough’s plan followed the standard series of actions beginning with days of artillery bombardment to cut the several bands of barbed wire, followed by an infantry assault supported by a creeping artillery barrage. As the time for the attack drew closer, Gough had a conversation with a junior officer from the British Tank Corps. The junior officer convinced the general that tanks would be able to smash through the wire more effectively than cannon fire. What the officer did not reveal was that the tanks at his disposal were only training tanks, manned by inexperienced crew and with well-worn machinery prone to breakdown.
 
At the last minute, Gough changed his plans, dispensing with the artillery altogether. He ordered the infantry to move up to the jumping off tapes in preparation for the attack on the 10th April. The men lay on the snow-covered ground awaiting the arrival of the tanks, all of which failed to make the start line on time either because of breakdowns or getting lost. Having revealed his plan to German defenders, Gough postponed the attack for 24 hours. On the 11th April, the 47th Battalion accompanied by 7 other Australian battalions and following the exact same plan as the previous day, rose up from the snow-covered ground and trudged towards the formidable defences before them. There was no artillery support and the tanks mostly failed for the second time. The few tanks that did proceed past the start line either became stuck in shell craters and tank traps or were put out of action with accurate artillery fire.
 
Many of the attacking infantry were hung up on the bands of wire which remained intact where they were cut down with enfilading machine gun fire. Remarkably, sufficient numbers of men got through to take two lines of the German trenches which they managed to hold for seven and a half hours until ammunition was exhausted. Their retreat across the snowy ground made them easy targets for the defenders on the flanks.
 
The battle, which became known as 1st Bullecourt was a complete disaster. Writing soon after the battle, the Australian War Historian Charles Bean said the plan to take Bullecourt had as much chance of success as a plan to capture the moon. Christy was fortunate to have survived his first action unscathed.
 
After the failure at Bullecourt, all the Australian forces in France were withdrawn from frontline duty and billeted in the rear areas behind the front in the Ypres salient in Belgium.
The British Field Commander, General Haig, had finally got his wish to conduct a totally British campaign in Belgian Flanders aimed at spearing through the German defenders to the Belgian ports on the English Channel. To do so he planned for a series of battles in the summer and autumn of 1917, each of which created a stepping stone to the next objective. The first of these stepping stones was a ridge line which was had been occupied by the enemy since the beginning of the war and which overlooked the ground that was to be used for the build up of British forces. The ridge ran almost due south from a position just outside Ypres, where spoil from a railway cutting had been dumped (the famous Hill 60) towards the village of Messines and on to Warneton on the French border.
 
The preparations for the Battle of Messines were carefully planned. Large scale models of the terrain to be assaulted were constructed and all troops who were to take part, which included men from the 3rd and 4thDivisions of the AIF, were walked through the models to familiarize themselves with their objectives. The general in charge at Messines had three and a half million artillery shells at his disposal which would be fired in the days leading up to the attack. In addition, British and then Australian tunnellers had been undermining the Messines Ridge for almost 18 months and had placed underground charges in tunnels directly underneath the German defences.
 
On the night of 6th June 1917, the men of the 47th Battalion moved up to the start tapes which had been laid by the intelligence officers in preparation for the signal to commence the advance. At 3:10 am on the 7thJune, 19 of the underground mines beneath the Messines Ridge were fired simultaneously. It was the largest man made explosion in history and the noise was heard in London.
 
The 4th Division was tasked with attacking the second line of German trenches, the Oosstaverne Line, behind the village of Messines itself. The 12th and 13th Brigades, encountered difficulties in moving forward due to the broken ground caused from the mine explosions but nevertheless succeeded in gaining the Oosstaverne Line. The British 33rd Brigade which was supposed to be supporting the advance on the right flank failed to keep up and the men of the 47th had to spread out too thinly in an effort to cover the gap in the line. There was confusion as to where the Australians actually were as they had failed to respond to a signal from a low flying aircraft to fire flares.
 
The British artillery, unaware that there were Australians on the Oosstaverne Line, bombarded the trenches with high explosive “friendly fire”, causing a number of casualties. When the 47th was finally relieved, a battalion roll call discovered that the battalion had sustained 463 casualties from a normal strength of just over 900. One such casualty was Christy Jessen. There is a suggestion in the file that he may have been buried somewhere on the battlefield but the fighting at Messines continued for the next two months and all trace of Christy was lost.
 
Nellie Jessen had moved back to her parents at Booyal while Christy was away at the war. Christy had left a will with the Queensland National Bank at Wooroolin, naming Nellie as his sole beneficiary, with two of his brothers as executors. Nellie received a small parcel of Christy’s personal effects, a wallet and some photographs.
 
Nellie was granted a widow’s pension of 2 pounds a fortnight, Ivor (who was 4) 1 pound a fortnight and baby Lloyd 15/- a fortnight. Christy Jessen is among the 54,000 British and Dominion troops who lost their lives in Belgium during the First World War and have no known grave. They are commemorated on the tablets of the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres (now Ieper) where each evening at 8:00pm, the citizens of the city commemorate the sacrifice of those young men with a ceremony under the arches of the memorial which concludes with the recitation of the Ode and playing of the Last Post.