Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Roger Fuller was born in Maryborough. He attended school at Mount Shamrock before going on to the land. When he enlisted in Brisbane on 10th January 1916, Roger was 22 years old, a farmer who stood almost six feet tall and weighed twelve stone. He named his father, Charles, of “Plum Tree” Didcot, Gayndah Line, as his next of kin.
 
Roger reported to Fraser’s Paddock camp at Enoggera where he was placed into a number of depot battalions before being allocated to the 12th reinforcements for the 25th Infantry Battalion. The 25th was part of the 7th Brigade of the 2nd Division AIF and had been in action on Gallipoli from September to December 1915. While Roger was awaiting orders to depart for overseas, the 25th Battalion had moved from a transit camp in Egypt to the northern sector of the Western Front in France.
 
The 100 or so reinforcements under the command of two lieutenants travelled by train to Sydney where they boarded the “Mooltan” on 12th April 1916 and arrived in Plymouth two months later. Roger and his mates were marched into the 7th Training Battalion at Rollestone before commencing a journey across the English Channel on 9th September to join the 25th Battalion. The 25th had endured an horrendous time at Pozieres on the Somme during July and August and was in serious need of a rest and time to take on reinforcements. When Roger marched into the battalion lines at Godewaersvelde in Belgium, the men of the 25th were enjoying a period of rest, sports and entertainment.
 
The rest period came to an end in the first week of October when the battalion was sent up to the front area at Ypres where they performed fatigue work. On the 19th October, orders were received to proceed south to the Somme. In the intervening months since the 2nd Division had left the Somme, the front had progressed seven miles. Winter was fast approaching and the British command wanted to progress the front a little further to the heights of Bapaume so that troops would be able to get out of the mud which filled the trenches in front of Flers.
 
Several attempts were made during the first two weeks in November to take the high ground but were easily repelled. The 25th Battalion was put into an attack on a series of trenches called the Maze on 5th November which ended without any gains. The 25th’s commander Lt Col Walker delayed his battalion’s deployment because he was waiting for rations to come up. Still exhausted from battling through the clinging mud, the 25th and 26th Battalions were attached to elements of the 5th Division when the attack was resumed on 14thNovember. Throughout the attacks against the German defences, the artillery had been unable to cut the German wire and the slow moving Australians (a sodden greatcoat weighed almost 20 kilograms) were easy targets for the German machine guns. Sometime during the attack of the 14th November, Roger Fuller was listed as missing. In the 12 days that the 25th had been in the line at Flers, casualties amounted to over 600; two thirds of the battalion’s strength.
 
Once Roger’s family were advised of his fate, enquiries were begun with the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Inquiry Service. Few witnesses were able to be located. Some confusion arose because there were two men in the 25th named Fuller. A Lieutenant Everett who had been in charge of the 12th Reinforcements from Enoggera and knew Roger well observed that Roger was involved in the attack on the first trench. The attackers had to withdraw, in some cases, leaving their dead and severely wounded behind. Everett concluded that since Roger did not return from the attack it was likely that he had been killed. Roger Fuller continued to be listed as missing until the 26th January 1917 when a burial report from a battalion of Northumberland Fusiliers was received at AIF Headquarters which stated that the fusiliers had located the body of Roger Fuller a few days after the attack on the Maze and had buried him in a temporary grave on the battlefield.
 
At the end of the war, the Imperial War Graves Commission began to consolidate the large number of temporary graves into permanent cemeteries. Roger Fuller’s remains were exhumed and reinterred in the Warlencourt New British Cemetery. A permanent headstone of Portland Limestone was erected and his father chose the inscription:
Sacred to the memory of my Son
Who died for his country.