Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Constable John Herbert joined the Queensland Police at the age of 20 in february 1908.  He was stationed at Petrie and Woolloongabba for four years, Woodford for three years and then back to Petrie for six months before joining the A.I.F.  He was awareded the Police 'Medal for Merit' for stopping a bolting horse and butchers' cart on 4 March 1912 by grabbing he horse reins (at great risk to himself) before anyone was hurt.  Private Herbert embarked from Sydney on 7 February 1917 aboard the HMAT Wiltshire as part of the 31st Infantry Battalion.  he was initially assigned to the 31st Ballation with his two brothers but was sent as part of the reinforcements to the 41st Battalion on 4 January 1918 as a Lance Corporal.  On 7 September, the 41st attacked Roisel in northern France and took heavy machine gun and artillery fire.  Lance Corporal Herbert 29, was wounded by shrapnel to the back and chest during this attack and died from would two days later on 9 September 1918.  His two brothers survived the war.

# 4766 HERBERT John (Francis)                                 31st / 41st Battalions
 
John Herbert was born at Maryborough on 8th November 1888, the eldest child of parents George and Ellen Herbert.  The Herbert family lived in Fort Lane, Maryborough. As a boy John attended a local Catholic primary school before moving on to the Christian Brothers School a few blocks from his home. After leaving school, John served for three years in the Citizens Forces in the Wide Bay Infantry while working at Bauple as a labourer.
 
On 29th January 1908, John applied to join the Queensland Police Force. The application was accompanied by statements from the local police inspector and Member of Parliament, attesting to his good character. Part of the application process was that candidates had to complete an examination of their ability in arithmetic and dictation. John received 100% on arithmetic and had one error in the dictation test; a tribute to the standard of education he had received at the Christian Brothers’ school. On 14th February 1908, at the age of 19, John was sworn in as a probationary constable based at the Police Depot at Petrie Terrace. His probationary period ended on 19th June when he was entitled to full pay.
 
John’s first posting was to Woolloongabba. John was awarded the Police Medal in 1912 for pulling up a horse and butcher’s cart that had bolted; a dangerous situation in a crowded road which could have ended in injury or death to onlookers and John himself. In 1913, he was posted to Woodford where he served for some time. John also had short stints relieving at Kilcoy and Blackbutt before returning to Brisbane. John’s last appointment was to Cleveland and while stationed there, he wrote to the Police Commissioner on 25thSeptember 1916 requesting a leave of absence so that he could enlist in the AIF.
 
During the early years of the war, recruiting had kept pace with the requirement for reinforcements but by July and August of 1916, and with the growing daily casualty lists appearing in the newspapers, recruiting had fallen away so markedly that the Australian Government was under pressure from Britain to introduce conscription, as had New Zealand and Canada. Perhaps in this period of tension, John considered he should enlist in the AIF, as his younger brothers, William and Arthur had done early in the war. After receiving the Commissioner’s approval, John presented himself to the Brisbane Recruiting office. He stated his age as 28 years and gave his address as Police Depot, Petrie Terrace. John named his mother, Ellen Herbert of Fort Lane, Maryborough as his next of kin.
 
John was assigned to the 13th reinforcements for the 31st Battalion. After a period of training, the reinforcements travelled to Sydney by train to embark on the “Wiltshire” on 7th February 1917. In order to avoid enemy submarines, the Wiltshire sailed via Fremantle, Cape Town and Sierra Leone to arrive in Devonport near Plymouth on 11th April 1917. Once on English soil, the reinforcements made their way to the 8th Brigade Training Battalion. The 31st battalion was part of the 8th brigade of the 5th Division AIF. That division had been so severely mauled in the debacle at Fromelles in July 1916, that the entire division was withdrawn from frontline actions while the task of rebuilding a fighting force began. John Herbert and the rest of his echelon of reinforcements in England were for a time surplus to requirements. John was sent to Musketry school at Tidworth to learn the finer points of the standard infantry rifle, the Lee Enfield .303. He also qualified on the Lewis light machine gun.
John was posted overseas on 27th December 1917 where he was transferred to the 41st Battalion, part of the 11th Brigade of the 3rd Division AIF, on 4th January 1918.
 
The Australian forces on the Western Front had spent the last half of 1917 heavily engaged in a series of battles in Belgium. The campaign became bogged down in in the Flanders mud during October and November and the onset of winter allowed the entire AIF to be taken out of the line for prolonged rest, reorganisation and training. When John marched into the 41st Battalion billets, he was promoted to Lance Corporal and sent on a bombing (grenades) course. With the coming of spring in 1918, the German commander Ludendorff took advantage of a temporary numerical superiority of troops to launch a surprise offensive against the British on the Somme. So successful was this offensive that in a few days the Germans had retaken all of the ground surrendered earlier in the war during 1916 and 1917; and were even threatening the vital communication hub of Amiens.
 
In response, Haig ordered two Australian Divisions to be rushed south from their positions in Belgium. The 11th Brigade arrived on the bank of the Somme near the village of Corbie in late March where they remained for the next two months. The battalion war diary records that on 21st April 1918, the men in the trenches witnessed the downing of the red Fokker triplane of the infamous Baron von Richthofen near the trench lines. By the end of April, the threat to Amiens had been neutralised but the German Army was far from being defeated. On 26th May, John reported to a field ambulance suffering the effects of gas. He spent almost a month at a casualty clearing station before returning to duty.
 
On 1st June 1918, Lieutenant General John Monash was appointed the overall commander of Australian forces on the western front. For the first time in the war, all five AIF divisions and the ancillary units attached were combined into a single force. Monash almost immediately began to work on how this force could be used to turn the tide. The Australians were pinned down around Villers Bretonneux due to a strategic position held by the Germans, called the Wolfsburg, near the village of Hamel. Monash planned a revolutionary attack plan to take the Wolfsburg which would include tanks, aircraft, artillery and infantry in a coordinated plan. John returned to duty on 22nd June, just in time to join his mates in the preparations for the Battle of Hamel, which was scheduled for the 4th July 1918.
The Battle of Hamel on 4th July 1918 was the first offensive action by British Forces since Passchendaele. Three brigades of Australian Infantry, including a company from the Illinois National Guard (it being American Independence Day) set off under an artillery screen supported by 60 tanks of the Royal Tank Corp and also supported by aircraft from #3 Squadron Australian Flying Corps who flew low over the battlefield to mask the noise of the tanks as well as dropping ammunition in parachutes. Monash estimated it would take his troops 90 minutes to reach the objective; it in fact took 93. John and his companions in the 41st, as part of the 11th Brigade had the task of capturing the village of Hamel. During the advance on the village, American Corporal Thomas Pope knocked out a machine gun to win the US Army’s first Medal of Honour in France. The following day, upon hearing the news of the Hamel success, the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau visited Monash’s troops. In his speech he said “I will tell my country men I have seen the Australians; I have looked into their eyes. I know that they will fight.”
 
Hamel was an outstanding textbook victory, a credit to Monash’s planning and attention to detail. Hamel indicated that with co-ordinated planning and use of technology, the tide could be turned. Monash was engaged to contribute to the planning of an even greater battle in August. With four AIF Divisions, three Canadian Divisions, and two British Divisions, the Battle of Amiens on 8th August 1918 was an enormous undertaking.
 
Much of the techniques that Monash had experimented with at Hamel such as aircraft parachuting ammunition and water to advancing infantry were incorporated into the plan. The 41st Battalion, as part of the 3rd Division began the advance near Villers Bretonneux at 5:00am in a heavy fog and smoke screen with the 2nd Australian Division on its left and the Canadians on the right. When the advance reached the Green Line at Lamotte-Warfusee, the Australians dug in and allowed the 5th Division to move through on to the Red Line at Harbonnieres. By the end of the day, the front had moved almost 10 kilometres into open country and over 7000 prisoners and 180 heavy guns had been captured by the Australians alone. The German Commander Ludendorff called the 8th August the “blackest day for the German Army.” A week after Amiens, John was promoted to the rank of corporal.
 
After the Battle of Amiens, the German forces on the Somme were constantly withdrawing eastwards towards the Hindenburg Line from which their offensive in March 1918 had been launched. Monash ordered his troops to maintain contact during the withdrawal, harassing and attacking relentlessly. By the end of August, the fortress town of Peronne and the high ground above, Mont St Quentin, had been taken and the British advance moved away from the Somme River towards the Hindenburg Line.
 
In the first week of September, the 41st Battalion, as part of the 11th Brigade, had pushed the German defenders back as far as the town of Roisel. As the 41st was being relieved by the 42nd Battalion, the lines were strafed by an artillery barrage, during which John Herbert received severe shrapnel wounds to his chest and back. John was taken to the 4th Casualty Clearing Station where he died of his wounds on 9thSeptember 1918. John was buried originally in a Military Cemetery at Proyart but during consolidation in the 1920s, his remains were exhumed and reburied in the Heath Military cemetery near Harbonnieres. John had left instructions in his will for his two life assurance policies to be paid out to his parents. A watch and chain were bequeathed to his brother William.
 
John Herbert is commemorated on a number of honour boards and memorials in his home town of Maryborough and also on the Queensland Police Honour Roll. His association with Woodford was rather short and John’s name does not appear on any of the town’s honour rolls; however John Herbert was considered to be worth commemorating with a tree planting and plaque in the Woodford Avenue of Honour. Sadly, that tree and plaque have not survived.