Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

PETERKIN Stuart Graham. #3874  26th Battalion
 
Stuart Peterkin was a 24 year old farmer when he enlisted on 13th September 1915. He gave his address as simply Post Office, Redcliffe and stated that he was single. Strangely he named his aunt, Miss Millard of Prospect Terrace South Brisbane as his next of kin, even though other documents in his file indicate that he had a sister, Mabel, who was a nurse in Melbourne; and even more strangely a wife, Henrietta. It may be that he married Henrietta after he enlisted.
 
Stuart was drafted into the 9th reinforcements of the 26th Battalion, a predominantly Queensland regiment with a couple of companies of men from other states. He embarked for overseas in Brisbane on the “Wandilla” on 31st January 1916 and by April was in camp in Egypt when the vast bulk of the Australian Infantry was assembling prior to being deployed to the western front. Stuart sailed to Marseilles in late July, and then by train to the large British depot at Etaples and its infamous training camp named the “Bullring” by those who passed through on the way to the front. Stuart joined his battalion on 31st July just in time to move up to the tapes for an attack against the strongly held German positions at Pozieres.
 
On the first day of the action, 2nd August, Stuart received a gunshot wound to the foot, listed as serious. The military authorities were often sceptical of wounds to the foot as there was the possibility that they had been self-inflicted. Stuart’s wounding was obviously serious enough to dispel such suspicions. Ten days after being wounded, he was admitted to the #1 Military Hospital in Liverpool where he remained for a period of 6 weeks before being discharged to a training battalion at Perham Downs.
 
Infantrymen like Stuart relied almost solely on their feet in moving from one bivouac to another, often marching many miles in a day on the roughly cobbled rural roads. It is surprising that Stuart was considered fit to return to active service after his serious wounding, but perhaps this is explained by the urgent need to supply reinforcements to the Australian units in the field after the devastating losses suffered (total casualties amounted to 23,000) on the Somme at Fromelles, Pozieres and Mouquet Farm in 1916.
 
Stuart rejoined his battalion in January 1917 and would have been involved in action at Lagincourt and Bullecourt before the entire 2nd Division was moved north into Belgian Flanders in preparation for a new summer offensive which began at Messines on 7th June.
Messines was the first in a series of engagements planned to progress eastwards from the Belgian town of Ypres towards a low ridge on which sat the village of Passchendaele.
 
The 26th Battalion had been called into the Battle of Menin Road in September and after regrouping at Poperinghe moved up to the jumping off tapes on 8th October. The new objective was the Broodesinde Ridge, the last obstacle before Passchendaele itself.
Unbeknown to the British planners, the Germans had planned an attack for the same day. As the artillery bombardment began creeping forward to protect the advancing Australians, they were met with a wave of German infantry coming up the reverse slope of the ridge.
During this chaos, Stuart Peterkin was hit and killed most probably by an artillery shell.
He was originally listed as Missing in Action but his remains were eventually located and he was interred in the Passchendaele British Cemetery.
 
His widow Henrietta was sent Stuart’s personal effects; shawls and scarves from Egypt, a camera and film and a broken wristwatch.
 
Henrietta subsequently remarried a returned serviceman in 1920. The military authorities were still attempting to present her with Stuart’s medals in 1930 as Henrietta was proving difficult to locate. She finally responded to an advertisement in the newspaper and the medals, plaque and memorial scroll were delivered 13 years after Stuart’s death.