Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of William Henry HOSIER and Sarah Susannah nee WARREN, Goomeri, Queensland.

#806 HOSIER Ernest               42nd Battalion
Ernie Hosier was born at Booie, near Nanango on 27th May 1896. His parents, William and Sarah were farming in the Booie district and Ernie attended school and grew up in the district.
Ernie travelled to Brisbane to enlist on 30th September 1915. He stated his age as 19 years and 3 months and his occupation was listed as labourer. Ernie spent the next eight months in training camp at Enoggera before being added to the roll of a new battalion being raised, the 42nd Battalion. The 42nd, part of the 11thBrigade, formed part of a new division being raised in England. Once the 42nd had been brought up to strength, the battalion travelled by train to Sydney where the men embarked on the Borda on 5th June 1916. The embarkation roll shows #806 Private Ernest Hosier of “D” Company had allocated 4/- of his daily pay of 5/- to his father.
The voyage to England, via South Africa and Sierra Leone, took two months and the battalion did not disembark at Southampton until the 27th July. The battalion boarded a troop train on the docks which took the battalion to the 3rd Division Base at Larkhill on Salisbury Plain. The 3rd Division, some 22,000 men in total, trained under the leadership of the divisional commander, Major General John Monash. On one occasion, King George V travelled down to Larkhill on his private train to inspect the Australians. During the march past, the king and Monash sat astride their horses and chatted amicably.
On 25th November 1916, the entire 3rd Division was mobilised and crossed the English Channel to take up positions along the front in the Ypres Salient in Belgium. For the next few months, brigades of the 3rdDivision took part in a program of limited assaults and trench raids in preparation for the big campaign of 1917; the 3rd Battle of Ypres or as most came to call it, Passchendaele.
 
 
The British Field Commander, General Haig, had finally got his wish to conduct a totally British campaign, which included Dominion troops, in the Ypres salient in Belgian Flanders. Haig planned for a series of battles in the summer and autumn of 1917, each of which created a stepping stone to the next objective. The first of these stepping stones was a ridge line which was occupied by the enemy and overlooked the ground that was to be used for the build-up of British forces. The ridge ran almost due south from a position just outside Ypres, where spoil from a railway cutting had been dumped (the famous Hill 60) towards the village of Messines and on to Warneton on the French border.
 
The preparations for the Battle of Messines were carefully planned. Large scale models of the terrain to be covered were constructed and all troops who were to take part, which included Ernie and the rest of the 42ndBattalion, were walked through the models to familiarize themselves with their objectives. The general in charge at Messines had three and a half million artillery shells at his disposal which would be fired in the days leading up to the attack. In addition, British and then Australian tunnellers had been undermining the Messines Ridge for almost 18 months and had placed underground charges in tunnels directly underneath the German defences.
 
On the night of 6th June 1917, the men of the 42nd Battalion moved up to the start tapes which had been laid by the intelligence officers in preparation for the signal to commence the advance. At 3:10 am on the 7thJune, 19 of the underground mines beneath the Messines Ridge were fired simultaneously. It was the largest man-made explosion in history up to that time and the noise was heard in London.
 
Two Australian Divisions were included in the order of battle for the attack at Messines. The 3rd Division AIF had responsibility for the northern sector of the front while the 4th Division was tasked with attacking the second line of German trenches, the Oosstaverne Line, behind the village of Messines itself. Once the Messines ridge was secured, the 42nd battalion spent the next weeks rotating in and out of the new front line and consolidating the gains. During a diversionary raid by the 42nd and 43rd Battalions on 31st July, Ernie received a gunshot wound to his left hand. He was taken via Field Ambulance to a casualty clearing station and then on to the 9th General Hospital at Rouen. By the end of August, Ernie had rejoined his battalion in billets around the city of Ypres.
 
With the threat posed by enemy positions on Messines Ridge neutralised, the bite and hold phase of the Flanders campaign could begin with assaults on the ridges north of the Menin Road and Polygon Wood in September. By the beginning of October, the brigades of the 3rd Division were called up to push forward the advance upon the Broodseinde Ridge and the villages of Zonnebeke and Passchendaele.
 
The Flanders campaign had begun in dry summer weather but by October, unseasonal rains turned the battlefield and the approach lines into a sea of mud. Engineers and Pioneers struggled in mud up to their thighs to lay duckboards and corduroy roads that were quickly smashed by the German artillery. Saps leading up to the front line became full of mud and men struggled to move forward. It was recorded in the official history that on one occasion, it took 15 hours for an infantry company to move up 2,000 yards. The men who were laden down with sodden woollen uniforms and greatcoats, not to mention the 300 rounds of ammunition and a rifle were physically and emotionally exhausted by the time they reached the jumping off tapes. Some battalions which had a nominal strength of 1000 men were down to less than 200.
 
The 42nd battalion began the trek to the Broodseinde Front on 2nd October and by the night of the 3rd/4thOctober was in position on the jumping off tapes for the commencement of the battle, signalled by a huge artillery barrage. The 42nd was in the rear behind the 43rd battalion as the troops moved off. When the 43rdreached its objective (the black line) the battalion dug in and the 42nd leapfrogged over the 43rd to advance to the red line where this battalion in turn dug in. The action was moderately successful and 100 enemy were captured as well as a number of machine guns, some of which were brand new and had not even been fired. However, casualties were significant for the 42nd with 22 officers killed and 200 other ranks killed, wounded or missing.
 
One of the missing was Ernie Hosier. A court of inquiry held a month later determined that Ernie had been killed in action, the whereabouts of his body unknown. A small parcel of Ernie’s personal effects; identity disc, pocket book, photos and cards, were sent to his parents who had by that time relocated to Goomeri. Ernie’s mother was granted a war pension of 30 shillings a fortnight.
 
Ernest Hosier’s remains were never located. 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 Ypres (Ieper).
Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of 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.