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Australia

Roy was born in Rockhampton but grew up in Mount Morgan, not far away. He was the third of four sons of Arthur Ronald Swain and his wife Margaret nee Brady. Roy enlisted in the 1st AIF on 17 Sep 1914 in Mt Morgan, Queensland but he actually joined the colours on 24 September and his service dates from that day. The recruiting officer must have queried his age, he was twenty, for on 18 Sep 1914, his father Arthur, wrote a letter to the Army to say that he gave Roy his “full consent to enlist for active service with the 2nd Australian Expeditionary Force.” The AIF had not been born yet but the first Expeditionary Force had already gone to Egypt. Roy described himself as a clerk who was twenty years old and who held a commission as a Second Lieutenant in E Company of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, a Militia unit. He did not want to wait for that unit to be called into action so he resigned his commission and enlisted instead. He was five feet eleven tall and weighed 11 stone, had a dark complexion, brown hair and brown eyes. Initially, he was appointed to the 15th Battalion in the 4th Infantry Brigade, the battalion being commanded by Lt Col James Harold Cannan.

Recruiting for the 15th Battalion was commenced at the Exhibition Grounds in Brisbane on 14 Sep and owing to there being no officers, men were drilled by NCOs of the instructional staff until 30 Sep. At that stage, the 653 men enlisted in the battalion so far were transferred to Enoggera. They were then divided into six companies on a territorial basis. Such officers as were in camp at that time were posted in the same way. Companies were divided so that those from Townsville area formed A Company (113 men), Rockhampton, B Coy (114 including Roy), those from Wide Bay formed C Company (116), men from the Brisbane area formed D Coy (116), the Darling Downs men the E Coy (115) and the ones from the Northern Rivers made up F Coy (116). Nearly 85% of the men were untrained so the CO was on the lookout for those who had both some training and promise. Roy, with his Militia background, was evidently one of these as he was promoted to Corporal on 1 Oct 1914.

The training schedule was hectic. There were physical exercises, squad drill, rifle exercises and musketry training with coaches from local rifle clubs. Special NCO classes were conducted including night lectures. Exceptional care was taken in fitting men’s boots and training them in the care of feet. (Trust Army people. Everyone knows they march on their stomachs.) And of course, there were route marches, beginning on 23 Oct with a short stroll of 14 miles. All feet were carefully inspected on return. The CO thought discipline was good even though 50 men had been “discharged for drunkenness or other crimes.” I am not sure how many people would agree with his assessment. And we might not agree with another emphasis that training indicates. Two men per company were to be trained each day as buglers. Also two men per company were to be trained each day as stretcher-bearers. The day would come when eight stretcher-bearers were needed to carry one stretcher and the bugle lost its appeal amid the horrors of the trenches. But they were happily unaware of the future, mercifully so.

In November, the battalion had 24 officers and 747 ORs on strength and were only short of three officers and 20 men to bring it up to its full war establishment. Oh, and one draught horse. They had 30 but needed one more. But things got much worse when around 21 Nov the battalion had to give up its horses bar two in accordance with an Army order. We have lost sight of the importance of horses not just to the Army but to the world in general in our mechanized era but then they were often vital to any form of action. The battalion had absolutely no motor transport in 1914 so an inability to move their stores etc in the wagons provided could render the battalion far less than acceptably efficient. But the men had been issued with their rifles and bayonets, one complete uniform, working dungarees and boots. However, they were short of harness for the horses and had only two water carts. Forty-two more reinforcements arrived.

On Thursday, 5 Nov 1914, the battalion marched from Enoggera to Sandgate, about 13 miles, and bivouacked there for the night. The next morning, before breakfast, they marched through and around Sandgate for five miles, just for the fun of it. It was a very hot day, 92o F, and two and a half percent of the men fell out along the way. However, the CO thought the results highly satisfactory, even though he discharged more men for drunkenness, principally over the Sandgate bivouac. Given that they started 20 men short and were 30 men short after the march to Sandgate, and that they had 40 reinforcements along the way, they must have lost quite a few; perhaps that is why the CO did not want to write specific numbers though by now he thought the battalion’s discipline only fair. Alcohol seems to have been a big problem from day one and right through the war.

About 24 Nov, the battalion entrained in Brisbane for Melbourne at 0530 reaching Broadmeadows Camp at 1700 on 26 Nov. On the way, they stopped in Sydney so they could practise a route march to Moonee Park. They carried their rations with them and our diary writer notes that no extra expense was incurred along the way, much to the relief of the taxpayer I suppose. The battalion was now at its full war strength, 32 officers and 991 ORs. Originally, planning had was based on a battalion of 27 officers and 767 ORs but early experience bought so dearly by British troops in France indicated that the rate of casualties to be expected was extremely high and a larger battalion would be a better bet than a smaller one. So the establishment was increased, indeed several times during the war, to provide sufficient manpower even with a high rate of loss. In early December, they got their horses back, it seems to me to the great relief of the CO who seemed quite lost without them. When we remember that the battalion’s mobility was solely down to the horses, poor ones were naturally dreaded. In fact, later on when the second convoy was about to depart from Albany, there was a fire aboard the ship in which a lot of the horses were travelling. Monash, then a mere brigade commander, wrote to the commandant of the Western Australian area to impress on him the need to get the ship moving because his brigade could not do anything when it landed without them.

Training continued for the men, including a stint being used as the guinea pigs to examine officers in giving drill orders, which must have been fun for all concerned. One wonders exactly what the men said, or worse, thought, about that. Over the next week, the horses proved quite unsatisfactory. The riding horses were too light and the transport horses too heavy. In the week up to 19 Dec, Melbourne’s famously salubrious weather deserted them and training had to be severely curtailed, only route marching was practised, so it was fortunate later on that the war could be put into abeyance when it rained as they were not trained to fight in the wet. But the good news was that they got some better horses.

Their training continued when the weather allowed of course and on Thursday 17 Dec, the whole of 4th Brigade, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th Battalions, marched to Melbourne from Broadmeadows where the Governor General took the salute. Ronny Munro-Ferguson was much impressed with “their physique and steadiness.”

On 22 Dec 1914, the battalion entrained at Broadmeadows in two special trains for Port Melbourne where they embarked aboard HMAT Ceramic A 40 which sailed at 1430. Roy had his first brush with the Army’s disciplinary system on 24 Dec when he was charged with ‘neglect of duty in that two hammocks of his mess were not stowed at 0615.’ This was a dreadful crime to be sure and he was found guilty and given a reprimand, the least serious punishment available to his company commander. Interestingly, his crime sheet was a page torn out of a notebook and written up in pencil. It seems that the unit had already run out of proper crime sheets. Perhaps they had underestimated the crime rate.

Initially, they sailed for Albany, WA where they joined the Second Australian Convoy headed for Egypt. The senior Army officer in the convoy was Col J Monash who was also the commander of the 4th Brigade. The 15th Battalion numbered 31 officers and 963 ORs, formed in eight companies, A to H, and 60 horses. In the Ceramic, there were 75 officers, 2,629 ORs and 21 horses. In the whole of the convoy, there were 318 officers, 10,030 ORs and 4,417 horses. Once they reached King George Sound, some of the men were removed from the convoy because they were medically unfit or otherwise not good military material.

While they were at sea, their training continued. There were even volunteer classes in French and German. On 5 Jan 1915, a new battalion organisation was instituted whereby each company of the now four companies rather than the earlier eight, would have an establishment of six officers, ten senior NCOs, 207 ORs and four drummers. Just what these leftovers from the seventeenth century were doing in a twentieth century army is anyone’s guess but their presence was a testament to the victory of tradition over thought in the Army of that period. They were eventually very useful as stretcher bearers and performed these duties magnificently.

On 3 Feb 1915, the battalion disembarked at Alexandria and entrained for Cairo which they reached that night. The battalion camped at Aerodrome Camp, Heliopolis, where they continued their training. On 21 Feb, reinforcements arrived for the battalion and they were split up among the companies. By this time, the companies were designated numerically not alphabetically and there were only four of them in the battalion. However, there were still route marches which must have been getting tiring as men were falling out regularly, so regularly that the brigade commander ordered that men falling out were to be reported to the Brigade Major, a very heavy handed step indeed. Mind you, the men were showing considerable weaknesses in their marching with many seemingly unable to cope with the desert heat while tramping through soft sand over long distances, carrying heavy and uncomfortable loads and with limited water.

One senses that at this time, there was some doubt about the men in the force. Monash himself seems to be somewhat overanxious that his officers were doing the right thing, to the extent that he circularized his subordinate COs with 31 points ranging from the sharpening of bayonets to having coloured, not white handkerchiefs for the men, possibly on the presumption that one could not surrender by waving a coloured handkerchief. The whole list smells slightly of extreme anxiety that his subordinate officers did not know what they were about and his men were not trustworthy. Quite a bit different from the legend. However, in justice, it should be noted that the battalion did not possess a grindstone for sharpening bayonets until 1 Mar 1915. The CO ordered all bayonets to be sharpened but left the handkerchiefs alone for the moment.

A lot of their training centred on the defence of Cairo after the Turks had crossed the Canal and were heading in that direction. But on 7 Mar, the CO wrote to his senior staff that he was unhappy with the fire control being exercised by the battalion and urged his officers to instruct the ORs more closely in fire control, fire discipline and fire direction. In an age before mechanization, men had to carry every round of ammunition and so the practice of using it sparingly and then only when there was some real reason was constantly drummed into the men. Apparently he thought that they were good shots individually but they had little idea of following orders as to when and where to shoot. And to cap it all off, the brigade commander was on his officers’ backs about the men flouting the dress code. Plumes, tufts and coloured hatbands were strictly forbidden. And on 10 Mar, the CO got around to telling his men to have their white handkerchiefs dyed at once. I wonder if he specified a colour or left it up to the individual. On 13 Mar, it was the state of the men’s boots that drew his ire. They were not cleaned well enough to slog through the soft, hot sand properly.

Egypt was a good place to train, wide spaces and no rain, and the battalion made the most of it, right down to being trained how to clean their water bottles. Monash would have every reason to be pleased with Lt Col Cannan. But not with the 32 men who, on 15 Mar, were found guilty of offenses summarily and awarded punishments between a fine of 2/6 and a week’s detention. Nor with the 65 men on 21 Mar whose sentences ranged from the 2/6 fine to ten days’ pay. Unusually, two Company Sergeant Majors were court martialed, one being fined one pound, not really earthshattering, and the other being reduced to the rank of Sergeant, which would probably have hurt. Their crimes are not recorded.

By 23 Mar, there was some information in circulation about their pending embarkation, if only that they had been warned that they would need their jumpers. And officers were told that pencils could not be used in reports, only ink, and in extreme cases, indelible pencil. Six of the men were in hot water for wearing emu plumes in their hats and the issue had to be investigated by General Godley, the GOC, himself. The men were paraded and undertook to be good boys but were told that if they were not, they would be in real strife. But today, the Army seems to have embraced their dereliction and parade plumed and proud on the least pretext. Godly would not be amused. And some of the officers still wrote in pencil with results that bedevil us even now.

Twenty-three lawbreakers were awarded punishments on 26 Mar, mostly for AWL and 23 men of the battalion were hospitalized with VD, an increasingly common problem with the AIF. On 29 Mar, Ian Hamilton inspected the division.

The whole of the Australian contingent trained through March and into April. On 11 Apr, at 0245, the 15th Battalion broke camp and were transported by train to Alexandria. There they boarded two transports, the Australind A30 and the Seeang Bee A29. The Seeang Bee left at 0500 on 13 Apr and arrived at Lemnos at 0900 on 14 Apr. The Australind left at 1500 on 13 Apr and arrived at 1900 the next evening. The troops were taken ashore by cutters and horse floats and practised disembarking as well as training over the next ten days. On 25 Apr, they were abreast the Dardanelles and saw the bombardment of the Turkish positions there. The Seeang Bee anchored off the disembarkation point at 1600 and two companies were transferred to a destroyer but not landed until 2230. B Coy, Roy’s company, landed that night and was soon in action.

Because the whole of the company could not be landed at once, the first portion ashore had to dig in on a slope near the beach. On the morning of 26 Apr, this party was detailed to carry ammunition to a hill to their right which was under heavy shrapnel fire from the Turks. The climb was difficult, up steep, rough ground. They dug in on the right flank and sat out the night under a hail of shrapnel and small arms fire. The Turks launched a series of attacks which were driven off with some help from naval guns. They were in these trenches for three days and three nights but then returned to the beach and eventually to bivouac in Monash Valley.

In the meantime, the destroyer had been subjected to artillery fire from the Turks and four of the battalion’s men were wounded. By 0030 on 26 Apr, the battalion had been landed. At 0900, part of the battalion was ordered to move forward to support the 3rd Brigade. The remainder of the battalion took up a position at the head of a gully between the 1st and 2nd Brigade positions. There they stayed until 30 Apr when they were moved to Monash Valley to allow the reorganising of the battalion. Around this time, the old alphabetical system of company nomenclature was reintroduced but it seems to have existed side by side with the numerical system, making for great confusion.

We do not know where Roy was at this stage but if he was still in B Coy he could have been with a platoon of B Coy men who were with Capt Quinn on Pope’s Hill. In the afternoon, the Turks attacked the front occupied by the 15th Battalion but were repulsed. The next day, the battalion advanced towards enemy positions and captured a section of their front. But, unsupported, they could not hold it and so withdrew to a spot beside the 13th Battalion. Early on the morning of 3 May, the Turks again attacked their positions and again were repulsed. Around 2000, the battalion was relieved by the Auckland Battalion. Next day, they bivouacked in Monash Valley and the day after that, the party under Capt Quinn rejoined the battalion. On 6 May, half the battalion relieved Pope’s 16th Battalion at 1700. After a few delays, the battalion attacked the Turkish trenches at 2230 on 9 May successfully but their flanks were still held by the Turks and so they could not hold their newly won positions. The battalion withdrew to its original line the next day but had suffered about 160 casualties, many of them on the way back. This day, Roy was promoted to Sergeant to replace Sgt GE Weston who had been killed. They were withdrawn from the front line for a few days but on 12 May they were back again at Quinn’s Post, recognised as one of the most dangerous places on the Anzac front. They were relieved at midday on 13 May by the 2nd Light Horse, returning to Monash Valley. Even with their losses, reinforcements had brought their strength up to 1089 all told. They lost 12 officers killed, two missing and 14 wounded in the first two weeks, 28 out of 31 officers in all, a very high percentage indeed. A dozen SNCOs were recommended to replace the officers killed. It says a lot for the quality of the men at that time that leadership places could be filled so quickly. Among the other ranks, 118 were killed, 296 wounded and 103 were missing. Those who were still in one piece at that stage were very fortunate indeed.

They went back to Quinn’s Post on 15 May and relieved the 2nd LHR at 1530. They made an unsuccessful raid on the enemy trenches but suffered very high casualties when they were caught by Turkish machine guns. Major SJ Richards, a medical officer, wrote to his wife about this raid: “The Light Horse are coming here dismounted in very welcome numbers, and are doing well. The Second Light Horse (Queensland) made a gallant fight when they got into a death trap, but they lost fearfully from machine guns.” He also noted talking to a number of the men including Roy.

The next day they were relieved by Pope’s men again and returned to Monash Valley. They were back in the line on 18 May together with several companies of the 16th Battalion, in time to meet and defeat an enemy offensive. But before the battalion returned to bivouac on 19 May, they lost another 12 killed and 43 wounded. Roy was one of the wounded, suffering a bullet wound to his left arm. Initially, he was admitted to the British No 16 Casualty Clearing Station on Gallipoli for treatment and on 21 May, Roy was transferred to the Hospital Ship Franconia. They sailed for Mudros where he recovered. It seems his wound was not too serious and that he returned to his unit fairly quickly. However, the records are not available to be certain how long he was actually absent.

Through the rest of May, the battalion alternated between the line at Quinn’s Post and bivouac in Monash Valley. Their causalities mounted though and by the end of the month they had 22 officers and 520 men on strength, a sad diminution of their original strength. On 30 May, the battalion lost Major Quinn after whom Quinn’s Post had been named. They were withdrawn from the front line on 2 Jun and bivouacked in Walker’s Gully.

The stayed camped in Walker’s Gully for the rest of June and into July, performing fatigue duties as they were allotted to them and resting as far as they could. They were always in danger from enemy shelling and suffered casualties from time to time through shelling. Some of the sick and wounded returned to duty and replacements were arriving in a fairly steady stream. The weather was hot and the flies numerous and frustrating. They attacked food on the way to the mouth and generally made life as miserable as possible, to say nothing about their transmission of disease. The lack of success in dislodging the Turks did little to improve morale but a message from General Godley praising the work of the battalion in the May battles did much to cheer up the men. At the end of June, the battalion had 25 officers and 702 ORs on strength with more returning to duty each day. The battalion diary has a gap from 19 Jul to 6 Aug 1915 and so does not tell us what was happening when Roy was taken ill and evacuated from Anzac Cove with severe diarrhea. He was admitted to 1st Stationary Hospital on Lemnos on 28 Jul 1915, but discharged on 2 Aug, apparently much improved, and rejoined the battalion on 3 Aug 1915. The sanitary conditions on Gallipoli were appalling so disease was rife everywhere, especially enteritis, dysentery and diarrhea. The rate of sickness was higher than that of wounds.

At some stage around early August, the battalion moved to a new bivouac site in Reserve Gully. On 6 Aug 1915, the battalion moved out at 2200 and marched south along Beach Road. They were attacking further along the coast in an effort to outflank the enemy. The four battalions of the 4th Brigade (13th, 14th, 15th and 16th) were advancing with B Coy, Roy’s company, in the lead. At one place, they crossed about 200 yards of open ground and were fired on from the flank. B Coy charged the Turks there with the bayonet, driving them back. Their advance continued but more Turkish fire came from their front and both flanks. D Coy was ordered up in support and the attack went forward again, clearing several ridges. A Coy was sent forward on the right to protect the advance from any interference from that quarter. Their objective seems to have been Abdul Rahman Bair. The whole of this area was rough, broken and stony and spotted with low prickly undergrowth in which the Turks took cover and disputed every yard of the advance. But the continued pressure from the battalion forced the Turks back and by daylight, they had driven the enemy off the high ground. The long march and the constant enemy fire had caused casualties and extreme fatigue among the men of the battalion. The other battalions had also moved forward with them and between them, they consolidated the new positions. The 16th Battalion was on the right of the 15th with the 13th and 14th to the left of them. Here they dug in, very quickly according to the CO. They constructed communications trenches as well which would have been hard work, on top of their exertions of the previous night. They received orders to stay where they were and not to attempt any further advance. I imagine the men were very happy to hear that. During their attack, they lost 30 men killed and another 82 wounded.

Later on 7 Aug, the 15th were ordered to move forward again, this time towards Koja Chemen Tepe. They moved off at 0310 on 8 Aug. Most probably, Roy was not with them at this stage. He had fallen ill again and was admitted to No 16 Casualty Clearing Station on 8 Aug 1915 and transferred to the 1st Stationary Hospital on Lemnos with enteritis. He must have been very ill because shortly afterwards, he sailed for England aboard the Hospital Ship Aquitania and was admitted to No 3 London General Hospital in Wandsworth on 23 Aug 1915. On 13 Sep 15 his father, Arthur, was advised Roy was in hospital in London. The battalion continued to play its part on Gallipoli and was eventually withdrawn with all the Anzac forces in December 1915. But because it was so badly knocked around in August and had so many relatively untrained men who had arrived as reinforcements, the battalion remained in reserve for the remainder of their tour.

It took a very long time for Roy to recover but eventually he was discharged from hospital and joined the 28th Draft of Reinforcements going back to the Middle East to rejoin the AIF. We do not know the date he left though as the record is silent on the subject. We do know however a draft of three officers and 74 ORs returned to the battalion from England on 5 Mar 1916. It may be that Roy was one of these. We also know that he was taken on strength by 47th Battalion on 20 Apr 1916 while that battalion was still in Egypt training. At this time, the AIF was being expanded with new battalions and divisions being formed. The 47th was one of the new battalions and many of its men came from the earlier Queensland Battalions like the 15th. The Tasmanians too contributed their share to the new battalions in the same way. The 47th Battalion officially came into existence on 3 Mar 1916 in Tel-el-Kebir and about half of the men from the old 15th Battalion were transferred to it to ensure that the new battalion had some trained and experienced men. There was a lot of trouble associated with splitting up the old battalions, as mates did not want to be separated from mates. In some of the old battalions, this was handled reasonably well; COs sensibly sent two companies lock, stock and barrel which made most people, but not all, fairly happy. In other battalions though, the decision of who was to go and who was to stay was left to junior officers whose motives were not always wholesome. There were many cases of the dregs being sent away with uniformly bad consequences for the new battalions and much unrest, often verging on outright mutiny, in the old ones. It was a very sorry chapter in the AIF’s history. My assumption is that he was away from the 15th for such a long time that the powers that be had no qualms about transferring him to another battalion as they were short of men. Usually, men were returned to their own battalions after bouts in hospital but occasionally there was a greater need elsewhere.

The new battalion trained at Tel-El-Kebir Camp, a lonely, miserable place by all accounts, and spent about two months as part of the Suez Canal garrison, protecting the Canal from Turkish incursions. Their training included long marches over soft sandy regions, sometimes with catastrophic results as water carts failed to keep up and many suffered greatly from dehydration. A number of episodes were so bad that the practice was questioned at very high level.

Roy was promoted to Second Lieutenant on 1 Jun 1916. Therefore, it seems likely that at least part of the time since he fell ill was spent in an officer training unit somewhere, possibly in England. Officer training had been reorganized in Feb 1916, and a course usually lasted four and a half months so the period seems right. I think this is the most probable explanation of his activities in between his being discharged from hospital and being taken on strength by 47th Battalion. Probably, he was given command of a platoon of around 30 men and became responsible for them and their welfare. It was not an enviable role for the life expectancy of a second lieutenant in action at the time was very limited, around six weeks.

His promotion coincided with the departure of the 47th from the Middle East to France. On 1 Jun 1916, the advance party of the battalion left for Alexandria to join HMT Caledonia. The next day, the remainder of the battalion boarded the ship, some 27 officers and 980 men while the remaining one officer and 11 ORs embarked on HMT Kingston. They sailed at 0855 on 3 Jun. These voyages were not always models of military efficiency marked by good discipline and rigorous training. There was some disciplinary issues and some of the officers found that alcohol was freely available and made the most of it.

The ships arrived at Marseilles on 9 Jun and the next morning they entrained for Bailleul West at 0100 on 10 Jun. The trip took 62 hours which in the trains of the period in France would have been mere torture. They marched to billets at Outtersteene and Merris, a few kilometres southwest of Bailleul. The battalion’s discipline broke down immediately with many men drinking themselves insensible on cheap wine and brawling in the fields. Discipline eventually being restored, their training continued in camp to 2 Jul when they marched out of Outtersteene at 1800 towards Sailly which they reached at 2000. At 1700 the next evening, they relieved the 1st Battalion at Fleurbaix which operation was completed by 0230 on 4 Jul. One of the men of the 1st Battalion noted that the newcomers seemed not to have any discipline and their CO was ‘a particularly useless sort of beggar’ for whom the CO of the 1st Battalion did not have much time at all. From then until 10 Jul 1916, they furnished working parties for the improvement of the local defences. Unusually on the western front, the line here was not a trench system but a breastwork of sandbags, the water table being too near the surface for trenches to be constructed. This made the men quite vulnerable to artillery fire and many casualties were suffered from shell fire. And when shells knocked over the sandbagged walls, the cover left for the men was insufficient for them to be well protected from small arms fire as well.

Then on 10 Jul, the battalion was relieved by the 53rd Battalion and the 47th returned to Sailly by 0430. Constantly throughout the various accounts of the actions of battalions in the war, one is struck by the extremely long hours the soldiers spent awake and the number of sleepless nights they endured. It must have been very tiring and thrown their biorhythms hopelessly out of kilter. Be that as it may, that same afternoon at 1530, they slogged another three and a half hours back to Outtersteene to their billets. They had a day off on 13 Jul but at 0630 the next morning, they filed out again, this time for Candas which they reached at 1600, and from where they trekked some more to Berteaucourt arriving, none too soon, at 2000. Here they continued with their training until 27 Jul when they left Berteaucourt at 0930 and trudged to Herissart. Two days later, they tramped out again at 0630 to Bande Vadencourt, arriving there at 0900 and taking up residence in huts in the local camp. The battalion spent the rest of the month there, resting and training.

Then, at 1330 on 1 Aug, the battalion marched to Brickfields and on 2 Aug, moved to Tara Hill where they contributed working parties for engineering projects in the area. They tramped up into reserve trenches behind the Australian position near Pozieres on 5 Aug. These reserve trenches were quite close to the front lines themselves of course and as such, were subjected to as much artillery shelling as the actual front lines. On 7 Aug 1916, the battalion was ordered forward to relieve the 48th Battalion which they completed by 1630. A and D Coys were in the front lines and B Coy was in Tramway Trench, a little further back. During this movement, the Germans shelled the area very heavily; in fact the shelling at Pozieres was, in the opinion of many of the men, the heaviest the AIF units experienced in the war. The battalion had many casualties in this action and Roy was wounded by artillery shelling, evacuated to the rear and admitted to the 13th Australian Field Ambulance at Warloy. He was hit in the right thigh by shell fragments and very badly hurt. He died at the Field Ambulance, possibly from shock and loss of blood.

He was buried in Plot 3 Row D Grave 1 at Warloy Communal Cemetery Extension, five miles west of Albert, France. His family was advised of his death on 17 Aug 1916. After the war, a photograph of his grave was sent to his father, his next of kin, on 2 Mar 1920, in recognition that many of the bereaved could not visit the graves of their dead sons, brothers, fathers and uncles.

His personal effects were returned to Australia in the Ajana that departed the UK on 13 Dec 1916. They apparently never arrived, as his father advised the Army. On 23 Jan 1917, more personal effects were dispatched home aboard the HMAT Wiltshire. Then, on 10 Jul 1917, more effects were sent home on the Themistocles. His kit bag was returned which contained all his kit that was not needed in the line. It would have been stored behind the lines pending his return from the front. He, like many others of course, never came back to collect it. In December 1918, his commission was forwarded to his mother, Margaret, to whom he had left all his property in his will.

Roy was awarded the 1914/15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal, all of which were sent to his father, along with a memorial scroll. His name is located at panel 144 in the Commemorative Area at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

Roy was much missed by his family and in an announcement of his death in the Morning Bulletin in Rockhampton on 24 Aug 1916, ended their tribute with the following:

The night is gone,
And with the morn the angel faces smile,
Which we have loved long since and lost awhile.

We who never knew him have not shared their pain but I am sure they shared our feelings of pride and respect for his devoted sacrifice and would be happy to know that he has not been forgotten.