Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 5623 LANGE John Charles                                       26th Battalion
 
John Lange was born at Meringandan outside Toowoomba on 26th October 1894. His parents. John and Elizabeth operated a farm in the district and once John junior finished school, he also worked on the farm.
 
John attended the Darling Downs recruitment office in Toowoomba on 3rd April 1916. He stated he was a farmer from Meringandan and was 21 years old. He was also quite tall for the times, standing 6’ and weighing 10 and a half stone. John proceeded to the Enoggera Camp where he was placed in the 11thDepot Battalion for initial training before being assigned to the 15th reinforcements of the 26th Battalion. The reinforcements embarked on the “Clan McGillivray” in Brisbane on 7th September 1916. The embarkation roll shows that John had allocated 4/- of his 5/- overseas pay to his family. The “Clan McGillivray” sailed via the southern Australian ports and Fremantle before crossing the Indian Ocean to Durban and Capetown in South Africa where supplies were replenished and coal loaded into the bunkers. The voyage then continued out into the South Atlantic with another coaling stop at Sierra Leone before arriving in Plymouth Harbour on the English south west coast after two months at sea. The reinforcements took a train to the 7th Brigade Training Battalion at Codford on Salisbury Plain. In December 1916, John and a draft of reinforcements for the 26th Battalion landed in France and were taken strength by the 26th Battalion on 19th December, in the middle of the coldest winter experienced in Europe for 40 years.
 
When John marched in to the 26th Battalion lines, the battalion was engaged in road mending and railway work, interspersed with short stints in the front line. The weather had forced a halt to any offensive operations but the infantry was expected to continue occupying the fire steps in appalling conditions. On one occasion, the battalion was moved some distance in open rail trucks which had filled with snow. With the coming of spring, the German forces on the Somme began a strategic withdrawal to preprepared fortifications some distance to the east; the Hindenburg Line. British forces, including the Australian divisions, cautiously followed the enemy’s movement.
 
The 26th Battalion, part of the 2nd Division AIF, approached the outskirts of the Hindenburg Line at Lagnicourt and Noreuil in March 1917. Efforts to breech the Hindenburg defences there and at nearby Bullecourt expended men and resources with little gain. In April, the 26th was in the reserves line at Lagnicourt. The failure of the British assaults on the Hindenburg Line in 1917 brought the costly Somme campaign to an end. The bulk of the AIF relocated to the French Belgian border area to prepare for a new summer offensive in the Ypres salient. The 2nd Division however remained on the Somme but were relieved of front-line duties.
 
For the 26th battalion, May and June were spent resting, training, taking on new reinforcements and repairing equipment. There was also time for sports and recreation, as well as visits to the divisional baths to have uniforms cleaned and new underwear issued. In July, the battalion relocated to Bapaume where they began to practice battle techniques which would be used when the division was called back to the front. In August, with the entire division re-equipped and at full strength and fit, the British Commander on the Western Front, General Douglas Haig, came to inspect the troops. Such activity was a sure indicator that the 2nd Division would be soon be on its way to the war once more.
 
In September, the entire 2nd Division began to relocate north to the Steenvoorde / Poperinghe area of Belgian Flanders in preparation for moving up to the ruined city of Ypres. After assembling around the eastern gate of the old city walls, the troops marched out to take up positions on the northern side of the Menin Road. The ensuing battle, known as the Battle of Menin Road was planned to be one of a succession of small advances using a “bite and hold” technique which would progress the British advance along the line of the Menin Road to a low ridge upon which lay the villages of Zonnebeke and Passchendaele.
 
The men of the 26th, in conjunction with the other three battalions which comprised the 7th Infantry Brigade, set off on 20th September 1917, under the protection of a creeping artillery barrage to take the Gheluvelt Plateau and Westhoek Ridge. The 2nd Division infantry, with the 1st Division on their right, advanced and dug in on a designated line to be leapfrogged by a following wave. In this way the front advanced to the edge of Polygon Wood. The success achieved was not cheap however with the loss of 5,000 Australian casualties. John Lange, as a member of a Lewis gun team attached to “B” Company survived his second major battle.
 
While the 1st and 2nd Divisions rested on the newly won line named Anzac Spur, two other AIF divisions, the 4th and 5th pressed home the advantage taking Polygon Wood and the outskirts of Zonnebeke on 26thSeptember. The stage was then set for an all out thrust to take Broodseinde Ridge, Zonnebeke and the shallow valley leading to Passchendaele.
 
On 1st October, the 1st and 2nd Divisions, flushed with the success of Menin Road, began moving up to the new frontline at the base of Broodseinde Ridge. The plan was a replay of Menin Road and Polygon Wood; “bite and hold limited advances” supported by overwhelming firepower. On the 4th October 1917, the men of the 26th Battalion, by that time well versed in the bite and hold strategy, began the slow advance behind their artillery barrage up the gentle slope of the Broodseinde. As the Australians reached the crest of the ridge, they were confronted with a line of German infantry advancing up the reverse slope. Miraculously, the German command had planned an attack at exactly the same time as the Australians.The enemy advance walked straight into the British barrage shattering the counterattack and German dead littered the battlefield. Broodseinde was considered a resounding success but again it came at a cost. The Australians suffered almost 8,000 casualties across the two divisions, one of whom was John Lange.
 
John was originally listed as Wounded and Missing. Enquiries were made through the Red Cross but apart from no report regarding prisoner of war status, little official news was forthcoming until John’s mother, Elizabeth, received a letter from Johan Heilig, a member of the 25th Battalion and a friend of John’s from Goombungee before the war.
 
In the letter, Johan told Elizabeth that her son was moving forward in the advance on 4th October with his MG Section when a shell landed near John, shattering his legs. He died almost immediately. This account was backed up by another soldier who witnessed John’s body lying on the battlefield. Neither man could state what happened to John’s body as the infantry had to keep moving. Normal procedure after a battle was for parties of pioneers or in some cases German POWs to move across the battlefield burying the fallen and marking the grave with a wooden cross or upended rifle. In reality, even for graves so marked, the likelihood of the temporary grave surviving further conflict or the ravages of weather was very slim.
 
John Lange’s remains were never recovered from Broodseinde Ridge. He is one of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave. Their names are inscribed on the Portland Stone Tablets under the arches of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in the City of Ypres (Ieper).
Since 1927, with only a brief interval during the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign. The ceremony concludes with the laying of wreaths, the recitation of the ode, and the playing of the Last Post by the city’s bugle corps. The ceremony draws a large crowd each evening.
The commemoration of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian war artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting, one of the Australian War Memorial’s most prized works of art, now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.