Narrative
Frederick CARSON #6547 49th Infantry Battalion
Fred Carson, the son of John and Mary Carson, was born in 1890 and attended school at Coorparoo and East Brisbane.
Fred enlisted on 3rd July 1916 at the age of 26. He stated his occupation as farm labourer and named his widowed mother, Mary of Annie Street Kangaroo Point, as his next of kin. Fred embarked with reinforcements for the 9th Battalion in Brisbane on 21st October. He had allocated three shillings of his daily pay to his mother who had moved to Darra.
The reinforcements arrived in Plymouth on 10th January 1917 and went into training camp at Dorrington. Five months after arriving in England, Fred was finally ordered to overseas duty. He arrived in the large British staging and training camp at Havre on 7th July 1917 where he was reallocated to the 49th Battalion, part of Monash’s third division.
The Third Division had gone into action for the first time at the battle of Messines in early June 1917, after which the division was then engaged in rotating in and out of the line in the vicinity of Ploegsteert. When Fred was taken on strength by the 49th, the battalion was in the rear areas performing fatigue duties and training for the next big assault.
The 3rd Division was called into battle again in late September to maintain the momentum gained at Menin Road and Polygon Wood. On 25th September, the 49th moved up to the jumping off tapes on Westhoek Ridge from overnight billets in Ypres. While awaiting the signal for the advance, a German artillery shell landed in the trench where men of the 49th were sheltering. Reports collected by the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Service all confirm that Fred received the full blast of the shell. When the smoke and dust cleared, there was no trace of Fred or his remains; he had simply been “Blown to pieces.”
At the conclusion of the war, a huge memorial was constructed at the Menin Gate in the city wall of Ypres on which were inscribed the names of over 30,000 British and Dominion servicemen who lost their lives in Flanders and have no known grave. Fred Carson is one of them.
As a mark of respect to those men who gave their lives to defend Ypres and Belgium, the citizens of Ypres hold a solemn ceremony at the Menin Gate each evening to commemorate the dead, and have done so since 1928 with only a brief pause during the occupation in WW2.
Submitted 7 August 2022
by Ian Lang
