Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

#3599 GREENUP Victor          49th Battalion
 
Victor Greenup was one of nine children born to Alfred and Marion Greenup on 25th July 1887. He was born at Maryland NSW, just across the border from Stanthorpe. Victor attended the Armidale School as a boarder and may have been a member of the school’s cadet corps.
 
The Greenup family were extensively involved in the grazing industry and at least two brothers had properties at Eidsvold and Bell while Victor had an interest in a property named “Baranga” at Wondai.
 
Victor attended the Brisbane recruiting centre in Adelaide Street on 26th April 1917. He reported his age as 29 years and 10 months. Victor also advised that he had been previously rejected for military service on medical grounds. It is possible this related to a hernia as his medical report on enlistment noted a hernia scar. Victor’s father died in 1916 and his widowed mother, who Victor named as his next of kin, was living with Victor’s brother, Harold, on his property at Bell.
 
Victor spent three months in camp at Enoggera before being granted a period of pre-embarkation home leave. He was allocated as part of the 10th reinforcements for the 49th Battalion, part of the 13th Brigade of the 4th Division of the AIF. On 1st August 1917, the reinforcements boarded the “Medic” in Sydney and sailed via South Africa and Sierra Leone to Liverpool, arriving there on 3rd October. The reinforcements travelled to the 4th Division Training Battalion at Codford.
 
On 31st October, Victor was appointed acting lance corporal and was assigned to the musketry school at Tidworth barracks. Victor qualified as 1st class in that course with the Lee Enfield .303 as well as the Lewis Gun. On his return to Codford on 1st December, Victor became an instructor on the rifle range at Codford.
 
Victor was promoted to the rank of corporal in January 1918 and continued to provide training to reinforcements and men returning from hospital until 12th March when he was posted the continent where he finally was taken on by the 49th Battalion. While Victor had been in England, the situation on the Western Front had changed with the signing of a peace treaty between Germany and the Bolshevik Government of Russia; and the subsequent release of 60 German divisions from the Eastern Front.
 
The German commander, Ludendorff, took advantage of this temporary numerical superiority of troops to launch a surprise offensive against the British on the Somme; Operation Michael which began on the 21stMarch. So successful was this offensive that in a few days the Germans had retaken all of the ground surrendered earlier in the war during 1916 and 1917; and were even threatening the vital communication hub of Amiens. If Amiens were to fall, the British faced the prospect of the Germans swinging south towards Paris.
 
In response, Haig ordered the 3rd and 4th Australian Divisions to be rushed south from their billets near Poperinghe in Belgium. The first units to be mobilized were battalions of the 12th and 13th Brigades; which included the 49th Battalion. The 49th Battalion boarded buses and trucks for the journey south on 25th March but only got about half way to their destination before orders were changed and they spent 24 hours awaiting new orders.
 
The two brigades, roughly half the size of a single division, were ordered to make their way to Dernacourt, a small village on the railway line between Amiens and Albert. This deployment required a forced march of almost 30 kilometres through the night with the entire German army somewhere out on the left. There were reports that German armoured cars were on the roads but the cars proved to be French farm machinery.
 
Upon arrival at the assigned position, the two brigades were ordered to take up positions on a ridge facing the gathering Germans on the other side of the railway line in the village of Dernacourt. There were no trenches and the men had to dig shallow pits while under enemy artillery fire. Over the next four days, the men of the 12th and 13th Brigades established a forward defensive line on the railway embankment. The enemy were only a few hundred metres away, massing in large numbers for an attack. Almost opposite the village of Dernacourt was a railway underpass which had been chosen as the boundary between the two brigades with the 47th and 48th battalions on the left of the underpass and the 52nd Battalion on the right. The 49th Battalion and 50th Battalion were occupying the ridge behind the forward line.
 
A massive attack by up to three German divisions began at dawn on 5th April. The situation appeared desperate as German storm troopers poured through the railway underpass and cut off several companies of Australians from the 47th Battalion. Casualties were very high and by mid afternoon the German line was halfway up the slope towards the ridge line.
 
A counterattack by the Australians, with the 49th Battalion called up from the support line began around 5pm. The 49th in the lead drove forward over the rise and into a storm of small arms fire as they appeared over the crest of the ridge in full daylight without artillery or tank support. A witness reported to the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Service that he was beside Victor in the charge down the slope when Victor was hit with a burst of machine gun fire, killing him instantly. In the confusion of the aftermath of the Dernacourt battle, Victor was probably buried in a temporary grave near the battlefield but the location of that grave was unknown.
 
A parcel of Victor’s personal belongings was forwarded to his mother in Bell which included socks, mittens, scarf, balaclava, a chequebook, an oil can and a spanner. Victor’s will appointed his two eldest brothers, Richard and Harold, as executors with his siblings to receive an equal share of his estate. By the time that campaign medals were being awarded to the families of those killed, Marion Greenup had died in Toowoomba. Richard Greenup in Eidsvold, as the eldest brother, signed for the British Empire Medal and the Victory Medal.
To honour the memory of his brother, Richard Greenup named a son born in 1922 Victor.
 
In 1938, some 20 years after the end of the First World War, the Australian Government constructed the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux. The memorial was dedicated by the newly crowned King George VI. The memorial records the names of over 10,000 Australian soldiers who lost their lives in France and have no known grave; Victor Greenup among them.