Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
#2631  BRACKEN John Herbert Whitley  1st Division Ammunition Column
 
John Bracken was born in Liverpool, UK, on 27th October 1887 to parents Joseph and Harriet Bracken. While John was still young the family moved to Yorkshire where John attended Penketh School in Warrington. Upon leaving school, John was apprenticed to a corn merchant as an office clerk but at age 18, emigrated to Australia with his brother Robert.
 
John made his way to the South Burnett where he worked as a teamster. He enlisted in Brisbane on 5thSeptember 1914 aged 26. John named his father in England as his next of kin. In recognition of his occupation as a teamster, John was taken on as a driver by the 1st Division Ammunition Column.
 
One of the main weapons employed during the First World War was artillery. In any given engagement, thousands of shells might be fired. The task of re-supplying the large number of shells fell to the Ammunition Column which used general service wagons drawn by either horses or mules. John and the other Queensland recruits boarded the “Rangatira” in Brisbane on 25th September 1914, barely three weeks since John had enlisted.
 
From the outbreak of the war, the Australian Government was greatly concerned with the German presence in the Western Pacific; particularly the ships of Admiral Graf von Spee’s China Squadron which has slipped out of the home port of Qingdao and was somewhere in the vastness of the Western Pacific. Until the location of von Spee’s fleet could be established, coastal shipping along the eastern seaboard of Australia was potentially at risk. The Australian convoy containing the AIF would have to wait in southern ports until the location and destination of the German cruisers could be established.
 
The “Rangatira” made it into Port Phillip Bay unharmed and the Queenslanders disembarked from their transport in Melbourne and spent from the 1st to the 16th of October in training, with the other sections of the Ammunition Column. John re-embarked on the “Rangitira” and sailed for King George Sound, Albany to rendezvous with the rest of the first division transports before sailing for Egypt on 1st November.
 
The 1st D.A.C. joined the rest of the 1st Division of the AIF in camp at Mena. Most of the work performed by the men of the column in Egypt was fatigue work as there was little need for the transport of ammunition or artillery spares. The DAC boarded a transport at Alexandria and sailed to the island of Mudros to participate in the Gallipoli landings on 25th April 1915.
 
Soon after the landing at Anzac Cove it was apparent that there was no possibility that the DAC and its heavy wagons and horse teams could operate in that environment. The gunners and drivers remained on board their transport as it sailed north from Gaba Tepe towards Bulair to create the illusion of a second landing in that area. The men of the DAC were confined on a crowded transport. The horses began to fret and a number of them died as the ship sailed up and down the Gallipoli coastline over the ensuing three weeks. Eventually, the decision was made to return to Alexandria.
 
The period on the transport ship had tested the patience of the men and once back in Egypt, frustration and boredom led to a sharp increase in incidence of men going absent without leave. Driver John Bracken was charged with being AWL on 3rd June and was sentenced to seven days in the detention barracks at Abbassia and a loss of three day’s pay. The unit’s war diary records that a number of absentees were declared deserters.
 
When the Australian Forces were withdrawn from Gallipoli in December 1915, the entire force went through a period of reorganisation and expansion. Ammunition columns were assigned a far greater role as the artillery expanded to accommodate the requirements of battle on the western front. In March 1916, the newly organised 1st DAC sailed for Marseilles and then on to the huge depot at Havre where new wagons and animals were assigned.
 
The campaign on the Somme in the summer of 1916 called for an increased contribution from the Field Artillery Brigades and the ammunition columns were hard pressed keeping up the supply of shells, small arms ammunition and spare parts. The columns also acted as a ready source of replacement men for the artillery batteries. The war diary of the 1st DAC from this point on records only places and lists of stores shifted on each day. John and his comrades would have worked behind the lines at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm, Flers and Lagnicourt. During a brief rest period in December 1916, John was promoted to the rank of bombardier (equivalent to lance corporal) and then a month later to full corporal.
 
During 1917, the focus of activity by the AIF shifted to Belgium and the Ypres salient. John was sent to the Divisional Artillery School where he probably trained as a gunner in preparation for the opening of the Flanders Campaign at Messines. The battle of Messines, carefully planned and resourced, called for the firing of three and a half million shells by the combined British and Dominion artillery on 7th June 1917. The ammunition columns were responsible for shifting this enormous amount of high explosive from the trains that had come complete from England to the ammunition dumps located close to the gun lines.
 
On 22nd July, the unit war diary recorded that a number of ammunition wagons had been held up by an overturned motor lorry. Enemy artillery spotted the roadblock and brought down an intense barrage during which Corporal John Bracken was severely wounded. John was taken to the nearby 55th Field Ambulance located in one of the many dugouts in the area. John died of his wounds that same day and he was buried near the Field Ambulance in what would become the Railway Dugouts Burial Ground (Transport Farm).
 
John’s parents were granted a combined pension of 70 shillings a fortnight. Joseph and Harriet Bracken chose the following inscription for their son’s headstone:
IN MEMORY OF THE DEARLY LOVED SON OF MR & MRS BRACKEN, WALLASEY, CHESHIRE.

John Herbert Whitley BRACKEN was born on 27th October, 1887 in Liverpool, England

His parents were Joseph BRACKEN and Harriet LYNCH

His brother Robert Cecil BRACKEN also served in WW1 (SN6365) and returned to Australia in 1919