Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of John Maurice FAY and Margaret Isabella nee ESKIRGGE of Prospect Street, Kangaroo Point, Qld.

FAY.—Killed 5th May, 1917. Pte. John Warren Fay, second son of Pte John M. Fay, Codford, England, late of Lytton road, Brisbane.

He gave his best, his life, his all.

# 2602 FAY John (Jack) Warren          26th / 12th Battalion
 
Jack Fay was typical of the young men who travelled around the state, looking for work in the early decades of the 20th Century. He was born in Brisbane to parents John and Margaret Fay on 8th January 1892. He attended school in Brisbane but by the time he enlisted on 3rd August 1915 he was probably working as a farm labourer in the South Burnett in the districts along the Gympie to Kingaroy railway line.
 
When Jack presented himself to the recruiting depot in Adelaide Street in Brisbane, he gave his age as 23 and named his father, John Fay, as next of kin. Jack’s mother was deceased and Jack could not give an address for his father. Jack was allocated as a reinforcement for the 26th Battalion and embarked in Brisbane on 21st October 1915.
 
The reinforcements probably thought that upon arrival in Egypt they would be going to join their battalion at Gallipoli; but by the time the troop transport docked at Alexandria, the Australian Forces were about to be evacuated from the peninsula. The reinforcements joined the large number of new enlistments in the camps along the Suez Canal to await final allocation to a battalion. Jack was taken on by the 12th Battalion on 1stMarch 1916 and four weeks later boarded a transport at Alexandria for the six day voyage across the Mediterranean to the French port of Marseilles.
 
The 12th Battalion was one of the original battalions raised at the outbreak of the war and was made up of men from the “outer states”; Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia. Upon arrival in France, the AIF which had grown to four full divisions was sent to the quiet sector of the western front near the city of Armentieres. The time spent there allowed the new men such as Jack to become acquainted with the routines of front line work.
 
The great British offensive of 1916 began on 1st July along the valley of the Somme River. Things did not go well. The British divisions of raw enlistments and conscripts were cut down by the withering fire of German machine guns with 60,000 casualties on the first day of the battle. After almost three weeks of fighting, but with very little gain in territory, the British commander committed his reserve forces, which included the four divisions of the AIF, to the battle. The 12th battalion, as part of the 1st Division AIF went into the line at Pozieres, a small village on the Albert/ Bapaume Road, on 24th July 1916.
 
During the capture of the village by the 1st Division, Jack received a gunshot wound from a machine gun. After presenting to the 3rd Casualty Clearing Station, Jack was placed on a hospital train for Boulogne where he received treatment in one of the many hospitals there before being discharged to a convalescent depot to recover. He returned to his battalion in September, by which time the AIF had been relieved from the Somme and was in rest camps in the rear areas in Belgium. With the arrival of winter, the AIF divisions were sent back to the Somme but there was little fighting and most efforts were directed at fighting off the effects of the harshest winter in forty years. Jack was sent to a Lewis Gun School in February 1917 to become acquainted with this light machine gun which was being distributed to the infantry battalions.
 
In February 1916, Jack’s father (also named John) enlisted in the AIF. He claimed he was 44 years old but given the age of his son, it is likely that John snr was much older. For most of the First World War, enlistments in the AIF had to be no older than 45 years. It is possible that father and son were reunited at some point during the winter of 1916/17.
 
While the British forces in Picardy were enduring freezing temperatures, snow and sleet, the Germans constructed a line of strong defences some distance behind their front line. They called the system the Seigfreid Fortifications but the British referred to it as the Hindenburg Line. Once the spring of 1917 allowed for movement on the roads again, the Germans began a tactical withdrawal eastward to the Hindenburg Line. The British 5th Army, which included most of the AIF, cautiously followed the withdrawal until they came up against a wall of barbed wire, concrete fortifications, pillboxes and reinforced trench systems at Bullecourt.
 
Elements of the 5th Army, including AIF brigades, attempted to break through in disastrous assaults at Bullecourt throughout April, often defeated by the weather, poor planning by British generals and equipment failure. On 5th May, an assault against the Hindenburg defences which included the 1st Division of the AIF was repulsed yet again with the 12th Battalion losing 33 men killed, 210 wounded and 25 missing. One of the missing was Jack Fay.
 
Jack had probably been killed somewhere out in no man’s land during one of the charges ordered that day. The Hindenburg defences were not breached and there was no prospect of stretcher parties being able to scour the battlefield for dead and wounded. A board of inquiry some six weeks after Bullecourt determined that Jack Fay had been killed in action. His remains were never recovered.
 
Jack’s name appeared on the casualty lists which appeared in the daily newspapers and a Mrs Richardson of Wooroolin was prompted to write to the authorities seeking news. It is perhaps due to this lady that Jack Fay’s name is included on the Wooroolin War Memorial and Roll of Honour. A Miss Pope of Gympie also wrote enquiring into the circumstances of Jack’s death.
 
Jack Fay is commemorated on the stone tablets of the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux. He is one of 10,000 Australians remembered there who died during the war and have no known grave.