Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

#5993  BUNTER William Fredrick (also Frederick)  15th Infantry Battalion
 
William Bunter was born around 1898 in the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight, directly across the Solent from Portsmouth, the third son in a family of four boys. He attended school at Haylands Board School in Ryde and may for a time have worked as an apprentice butcher. Around 1913, William joined the Church Army, a branch of the Anglican Church which managed the Lads’ Immigration Scheme.
 
The Church Army was just one of a number of schemes in England from about 1900 onwards which provided training and placement for young men to be employed in rural pursuits predominately in Canada and Australia. William attended a farm school in Essex before joining a group of boys who would sail to Australia. Upon arrival in Brisbane, the Lads’ Immigration Bureau which had headquarters in Charlotte Street, arranged placement in a suitable situation. William was 16 years old when he arrived in Brisbane and was assigned to Mr Jackson of Kamarooka Station, Gooroolba on the Gayndah rail line.
 
Shortly after turning 18, William arrived at the Brisbane Recruiting Depot in Adelaide Street on 9th March 1916. He stated his address as Gooroolba and occupation as farm labourer. At such a young age, William would technically have required his parent’s permission to enlist. He either convinced the recruiters that he could not obtain his parents consent or asked an office holder of the Church Army to accompany him to the recruiters. In any event, William was accepted and reported to Enoggera Army Camp where he was initially placed in the 11th Depot Battalion. William was a lad of small stature, being only 5’4” tall and weighing just over 8 stone.
 
William was allocated as part of the 19th reinforcements for the 15th Infantry Battalion and on 8th August, boarded the “Itonus” in Brisbane for overseas. The embarkation roll shows he had named his mother in England as next of kin. The reinforcements landed at Plymouth on 18th October and were loaded on to a train for the journey to the 4th Division Training Depot at Rollestone on Salisbury Plain. A month later, William was on a cross channel ferry headed for the huge British Training and Transit Depot at Etaples on the French Coast.
 
Almost as soon as arriving in France, William reported sick to the 26th General Hospital. His file described his illness as P.U.O. (pyrexia of unknown origin) but by the 31st December, it was determined that he was suffering from influenza. William spent a further two weeks in convalescent depots before returning to Etaples. On 26th February, William was finally taken on by the 15th Battalion which was in training near Ribemont.
 
During the month of March, the 15th Battalion as part of the 4th Brigade of the 4th Division, was engaged in brigade manoeuvres in preparation for the resumption of offensive operations. In the lull in fighting of the previous winter, the Germans had constructed a 150 kilometre long defensive barrier, which they named the Seigfreid Position but the British labelled the Hindenburg Line, some distance to the east of their previous positions astride the Somme. As the German forces began a strategic withdrawal to this new position, 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. William, still with no experience of actual warfare, and the rest of the 15th 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 were only training tanks 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 15th Battalion accompanied by 7 other Australian battalions rose up from the snow covered ground and trudged towards the formidable defences before them following the same plan of the previous day. There was no artillery support and the tanks mainly 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. When the 15th was taken out of the line the next day, a battalion roll call noted the large number of men killed or wounded. There were also an extraordinary number of men listed as missing, one of whom was Private William Bunter.
 
Miss Clara Livermore of Poole wrote to the Red Cross enquiring about William which advised that it was possible that William was a prisoner of war but this could not be confirmed until the German authorities provided up to date prisoner lists. By July of 1917, and with no confirmation of any alternate possibilities, a Court of Inquiry determined that William had been killed in action, the whereabouts of his body unknown.
 
The Australian Government resolved to erect a memorial to missing soldiers similar to the British memorial at Thiepval but was not until 1938 that the newly crowned King George VI and his wife dedicated the Australian National Memorial which sits proudly on a windswept hill near the village of Villers Bretonneux. The memorial’s tablets list the names of over 10,000 Australians who lost their lives in France and have no known grave. William Bunter of the 15th Battalion is among those listed.