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Frederick George William Osborn was born in March 1893 at Red Hill South Australia, a farming community on the Broughton River, 170 km north of Adelaide. Fred was the eldest child of William Osborn and Elizabeth Masters, William’s father having settled in the area from Kangaroo Island in the late 1860s.

Fred enlisted in the AIF on 6 January 1916 as a reinforcement for the 32nd Battalion. The 32nd Battalion had been raised as part of the 8th Brigade at Mitcham, on the outskirts of Adelaide, on 9 August 1915. The original battalion had sailed from Adelaide on 18 November 1915 and, with the 8th Brigade, joined the newly raised 5th Australian Division in Egypt, proceeding to France and the Western Front in June 1916.

Fred sailed from Adelaide on the HMAT Shropshire on 12 March 1916 and spent time training in Egypt before sailing for England on the HMT Franconia, arriving on 16 June. While the reinforcements were given more intensive training in trench warfare, the 32nd Battalion was preparing for its first experience in the front-line to the south of Armentieres near the town of Fromelles.

“On 13 July, after receiving intelligence reports that the Germans had withdrawn approximately nine infantry battalions from the Lille area between the 9th and 12th of July, General Headquarters informed the commanders of the First and Second Armies that local attacks were to be carried out at the army boundary around 18 July, to exploit the depletion of the German units in the vicinity.

The Fromelles attack took place 16 kilometres from Lille between the Fauquissart-Trivelet road and Cordonnerie Farm, an area overlooked from Aubers Ridge to the south. The ground was low-lying and much of the defensive fortification on both sides consisted of breastworks, rather than trenches. Preparations for the attack were rushed, the troops involved lacked experience in trench warfare and the power of the German defence was significantly underestimated, the attackers being outnumbered 2:1. The advance took place in daylight, against defences overlooked by Aubers Ridge, on a narrow front which left German artillery on either side free to fire into the flanks of the attack.

General von Falkenhayn, the German Chief of the General Staff, had initially judged the attack to be a long anticipated offensive but on the next day when the effect of the attack was known and a captured operation order from XI Corps revealed the limited intent of the operation, he ordered the Guard Reserve Corps to be withdrawn to reinforce the Somme front.

The Battle of Fromelles had inflicted some losses on the German defenders but gained no ground nor deflected many German troops bound for the Somme. The attack was the début of the AIF on the Western Front and the Australian War Memorial described the battle as “the worst 24 hours in Australia’s entire history”. Of 7,080 British Expeditionary Force casualties, 5,533 losses were incurred by the 5th Australian Division; German losses were 1,600–2,000, with 150 taken prisoner.

The attack was a disastrous introduction to battle for the 32nd Battalion having only entered the front-line trenches for the first time 3 days previously. It suffered 718 casualties, almost 75 per cent of the battalion’s total strength, but closer to 90 per cent of its actual fighting strength. Although it still spent periods in the front line near Armentieres, the battalion played no major offensive role for some time.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_at_Fromelles)  

On 5 September Frederick Osborn left England with the 32nd Battalion’s reinforcements, arriving at the Australian Base Depot at Etaples on 9 September. Further training at Etaples saw the reinforcements ready to move out for the front line on 23 September, a 6-day journey by whatever transport was available, but mostly on foot with the French winter drawing closer.

To the north of the 5th Divison, the 51st (Highland) Division occupied the left sector of the Corps front outside Armentieres. In order to move that division for employment elsewhere, another division was needed to fill the gap. On 20 September a new composite force was created under the command of Major General George Franks. It was made up of two brigade groups, one supplied by the 34th (British) Division and one by the 5th Australian Division. The 34th Division and the 5th Australian Division were therefore obliged to hold their fronts with two brigades, each instead of three while the other two brigades, one from each division, took over the 51st Divisional front.

By rearranging two 3-brigade divisions into three 2-brigade divisions the 5th Australian and 34th British Divisions were able to hold three divisional fronts. The 8th Brigade Group with the 29th, 30th, 31st and 32nd battalions, as well its artillery, field ambulance, engineers and pioneer units, was detached as the 5th Division’s contribution to the new formation.

On the night of the 23 September the 8th Brigade moved to Armentieres and relieved the 154th Brigade on the left frontage of the Armentieres sector near Houplines, a village immediately to the north of the town. The 103rd Brigade of the 34th British Division took over the right half at the same time. The ad hoc nature of this new divisional force left it without any real identity but General Franks, with an improvised divisional staff, controlled both brigade groups as a divisional commander of what quickly became known as Franks’ Force.

At 48 Major-General Franks had considerable experience behind him. Born in 1868 and educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, he was commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1887. From 1894 to 1898 he served on the North West Frontier of Pakistan on the Waziristan and the Tochi Valley expeditions keeping the uneasy peace with the Afghan Emirate. In 1898-1899 Captain Franks went to North Africa on the Nile Expedition with Lord Kitchener to reconquer the Sudan after it was lost to Britain following the fall of Khartoum and the unsuccessful Gordon Relief Expedition in 1885. He was Mentioned in Despatches for his role at Omdurman when his horse was killed.

As a Lieutenant Colonel he was a Professor at the Quetta Staff College in India from 1909 to 1912. From August 1914 Franks served with the British Expeditionary Force in France commanding No1 Heavy Artillery Reserve Group and then as General Officer Commanding the Royal Artillery in the 2nd Army. He developed the principles for counter battery work which would remain the British doctrine for artillery for the rest of the war.

Leaving the front line on 21 September the 32nd Battalion rested in billets in Armentieres. They were ordered back to their new front line on the 23rd, just as their 33 reinforcements arrived, keen to see action for the first time.

The front line in the Houplines sector presented some marked contrasts to the one the 8th Brigade had just left. Although the trenches were nominally continuous, they were held rather as a series of strong posts with unoccupied stretches between them. The defensive works were in need of considerable repair and the brigade’s field engineers and the pioneers were soon hard at work on them.

The town of Armentieres, though only about two miles from the front line, was not at the time entirely vacated by its civilian population. It was far from being the utter ruin that it eventually became. Nevertheless, it was undergoing steady demolition from heavy bursts of enemy shelling, especially one on 28 September, materially added to its destruction and caused a good many casualties among its civilians. “C” Company of the Pioneer Battalion suffered severely on the same day. A large shell struck the carpenter’s shop where a number of men were working and killed five. Five others died of wounds and six more were severely wounded. This was a double misfortune for “C” Company. It had recently lost eight men through a shell striking one of its billets near Fleurbaix.

Casualties in the Houplines sector were treated by the 8th Field Ambulance located in Armentieres. With the shelling of the town many of the unit’s patients were civilians. The sector had been held by the British since early in 1915 and the small cemetery at Houplines quickly became full. With the field ambulance units based in Armentieres and surrounding villages well back from the front, other cemeteries were used. The 8th Field Ambulance used an annex of the Armentieres Community Cemetery at Cite Bonjean.

The Australian sense of humour has become one of the important aspects of the Aussie digger during the war, but it would be wrong to cast others as being without humour. The British soldiers could be just as comical when it came to making the best of a bad situation.

The British trench maps were important tools for planning and conducting operations but they were not always available or quick to use. Various features of the terrain were named using easily understood terms that quickly came into common use. Many features such as Four Hallots Farm were already identified as such although some licence was taken in the way the soldiers pronounced it.

Some simple names were adopted such as the White House and La Maison Verte, houses painted white and green respectively. Not that much of the colours remained for long. Westminster Bridge was planking over a brook running through the trench. Southend Pier was more planking for entering the trench near the brigade headquarters. The Chicken Run was a row of outhouses in the German lines about 40-50 metres away.

These names were important and used when desiring to stipulate any portion of the trench, whether speaking between individual soldiers or in communication with the artillery. For instance, a large number of men might be seen working in the trench by the Chicken Run as could be seen by planks moving above the level of the trench, or from water being bailed out. A message would be sent back asking the artillery to shell just in front of the Chicken Run.

Exactly how these place names came about is not well recorded and there are probably many surrounding the Chicken Run. One story is probably as good as another. A likely one is that when the British laid their trench line there was in fact a farm that lay deserted, its lawful owners having found the situation too hot for them. Cows roamed about at random, and so did pigs. But after the British soldiers had dug themselves in and made their position secure, the chickens were what interested them most. There were at least two hundred and fifty of these and they used to parade on the strip of ground shown in the picture below, the bolder spirits peeping over the edge of the trench.

Catching them was good sport, but eating them was something finer. What a nice change from bully beef and biscuit! Cooking, not quite a la Carlton or the Ritz, but more on prehistoric principles. So many fowls were caught, killed and plucked for cooking and eating that the wet mud was completely covered with feathers and resembled a feather bank, the feathers sticking to the wet mud on the men’s uniforms and equipment turning them into wild men.

The enemy did fairly well also with the poultry farm in the distance. They appeared to have a portable kitchen, the British soldiers often watching the funnel moving about their trench. One day a line was stretched from the funnel to a pole and German officers’ uniforms were hung out on the line to dry over the stove. It made too good a target and shooting at officers’ uniforms was a pleasant diversion. They had been well pierced with bullets before they were taken in.

The 8th Brigade’s sector was divided into 4 sections and the battalions designated as A, B, C and D battalions in turn. The A and B battalions occupied the right and left halves of the brigade’s front line while the C battalion occupied a subsidiary trench line further back. The C battalion provided fatigue parties to carry supplies of food, water and ammunition to the men in the front line. The D battalion was in billets in Houplines village resting and training.

The 32nd battalion moved into the C battalion area on 23 September, a fairly innocuous role for the new men like Fred who were ready to fight after nine months of training in how to fight. The 30th and 31st battalions were A and B battalions with the 29th Battalion in billets.

According to the 30th Battalion’s War Diary the sector “was found to comprise defended localities with gaps intervening.” The parapets, traverses and wire were all in bad order and the work of fixing them commenced immediately. The first few days went by fairly quietly as all four battalions set to work to make their areas both liveable and protected.

On 28 September the battalions changed over with the 32nd battalion replacing the 31st and the 29th occupying their left flank opposite the Chicken Run. On 29 September the new men had their wish granted.

One of the reasons for the creation of Franks’ Force was to convince the Germans that the line near Armentieres was fully defended thus forcing them into committing troops to the area and keeping them away from the Somme. To do this the units holding the line needed to take the offensive by attacking the Germans on a fairly frequent basis. From 29 September the 8th Brigade commenced what would be a daily bombardment on the Germans by the Light and Medium Trench Mortar Batteries. On each occasion the Germans would retaliate with a barrage from their Minenwerfers and the Australians could only drop down into their shelters and hope they were strong enough.

One advantage though about having a Divisional Commander who was a specialist in counter-barrage artillery was that their own artillery was at its peak in efficiency. The Australian artillery’s response was quick and deadly in silencing the German mortars.

On 1 October the battalion received a further 31 reinforcements, all of whom had come straight from the 5th Division’s Bombing school. This meant that each of the battalion’s companies could form an additional grenade team. Overhead British aircraft could be seen flying high over the German lines during the afternoon and again the following morning.

At 8 am on 4 October the 32nd Battalion was relieved by the 31st Battalion and moved into the billets in Houplines after what was in relative terms, an uneventful time in the front line. In the billets there was time to clean their clothing and equipment and even the opportunity for a hot shower courtesy of the bath unit. The battalion also provided working parties for a variety of tasks as well as giving attention to the training of Lewis gunners, grenadiers, runners and signallers.

On the night of 7 October a platoon from the 29th Battalion climbed quietly from their trench and moved across “No Man’s Land” towards the Chicken Run. Their timing was bad and before they could even reach their designated position from which their raid would start they came across a German patrol in the dark. The Germans were quick to respond with their grenades and with five of the men wounded and the Platoon Commander missing and thought to be dead, the raid failed and the men returned to their own lines.

On 12 October at the Army Headquarters a decision was made that the Australians would be returning to the Somme, this time including the 5th Division. The 8th Brigade would be pulling out of the Houplines Sector the following day to be replaced by the New Zealand Division. To keep the illusion that the Armentieres front line was still fully committed the 5th Division Commander ordered a total of 12 raids to be carried out that evening along its entire front, including the 8th Brigade which was still under command of General Franks.

At 7:30 pm the 31st Battalion raiding party climbed over the parapet in the darkness and moved forward to attack the Chicken Run again. With careful planning and good leadership the raiders were able to cross No Man’s Land quickly under cover of the brigade’s mortars. After thirteen minutes they dropped down into the Chicken Run, and stayed in the German line for forty minutes, entirely clearing the sector. Dugouts were bombed, first with smoke-bombs and then with mortars. A large number of Germans were killed and 4 prisoners of the 9th Bavarian Infantry Regiment were brought back as well as a machine gun and a quantity of German equipment. The 31st lost only one man killed on the raid and seven wounded.

The 32nd Battalion was not so lucky. After 2 weeks of being bombed by German Minenwerfers the battalion received its first casualties of the action. The unit’s war diary doesn’t give any details of what happened; only that two men were wounded and another two killed, most likely from the Minewerfer bombardment. One thing we do know though is that one of those killed was Private Frederick G W Osborn.

Fred’s body was taken from the field to the 8th Field Ambulance along with the other dead soldier and the wounded. After little more than a fortnight at the front Fred was buried in the Cite Bonjean Military Cemetery in Armentieres.