Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Victor Parcell #4886 15th Battalion

Victor Parcell was born at Harrisville, the son of Harry and Mary Parcell. It is assumed he attended school at Harrisville before leaving school to work for Queensland Railways.

Vic presented himself for enlistment in Brisbane on 6th September 1915. He gave his age as 21 and stated his occupation as railway employee. When Vic reported to Enoggera he was allocated as part of the 15th reinforcements of the 15th Battalion which at that time was manning the trenches on Gallipoli.

Vic and the rest of the reinforcements boarded the “Commonwealth” in Brisbane on 28th March 1916 and arrived in Egypt on 5th May, by which time the bulk of the AIF had already departed for the France and the Western Front. The late arrivals were kept in Egypt on garrison duty until the Turkish threat to the Suez Canal was neutralised by the defeat of a Turkish force by the Australian Light Horse at Romani. With the safety of Egypt secured, Vic boarded a transport in Alexandria and sailed for England, arriving in Plymouth on 6th August 1916. July and August proved to be a harrowing time for the battalions of the AIF in France, with serious casualties inflicted in the Somme battles. Reinforcements were desperately required and Vic was posted overseas to the 15th Battalion on 16th October 1916. After the horrors of the Somme campaign, the AIF battalions rotated in and out of the front lines fighting the coming winter as much as the enemy.

On the 1st February 1917, two companies of the 15th Battalion were ordered to mount a large scale trench raid against the German trenches at Bazentin, just south of Pozieres. The attack was across a front of 500 yards and although the stunt was described in the Battalion War Diary as a success with 50 prisoners being taken. A German counter attack supported by artillery trapped a number of Australians in no man’s land, forcing them to take cover in shell holes. Reports in the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Files describe how Corporal Rowe told Vic to get down as he was quite excited. Vic was then wounded by shell fire during a barrage and when the firing stopped his companions found no trace of him. It was assumed that he may have been taken prisoner and was posted as Wounded and Missing.

Vic Parcell’s name did not appear on the German POW lists over the next few months and in June of 1917, four months after he disappeared, Vic’s remains were discovered by members of the Australian Fifth Division. His file states he was reburied but there is no description of the site in his file.

Like so many young men who fell on the Somme, Vic’s grave, if it ever existed, was lost in the subsequent fighting of 1918. Victor Parcell is commemorated on the tablets of the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux.