Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

#723 TRUSS Jacob      7th Machine Gun Company / 26th Battalion
 
Jacob Truss was born at Tambo around 1887 to Phillip and Mary Truss. By the time that Jacob enlisted on 8th January 1917, He was farming at Kumbia with his brother George. Jacob’s father had died some years previously and Mary Truss was living with another brother, Fred, at Greenwood, Oakey.
 
Jacob initially presented himself for enlistment at Kingaroy on 8th December 1916 but he was unable to complete the process there so he took the train to Gympie from Kingaroy and then on to Maryborough which was the nearest official recruiting office. He was officially accepted into the AIF on 8th January 1917. Jacob gave his age as 30 and stated his occupation as farmer of Kumbia. He named his mother, Mary, of Greenwood Oakey as his next of kin. There was some concern about Jacob’s teeth by the medical officer and his papers were stamped “special dental case” which probably implied that the dental problem would be attended to once he reached camp at Enoggera. In earlier times, men were often turned away by recruiting officers if they had bad teeth but by the end of 1916, and the defeat of the first plebiscite regarding conscription in October, the situation regarding enlistments was so desperate that standards regarding a range of selection criteria were relaxed.
 
After a short time in a depot battalion at Enoggera, Jacob was drafted as a reinforcement for the 7th Machine Gun Company. The authorities had decreed that no enlistee could embark for overseas without qualifying at musketry so Jacob remained at Enoggera until he could gain the required score on the rifle range. During that time, he was granted four days home leave which it appears he spent in Kingaroy attending to his affairs and business.
 
On 5th March 1917, Jacob was marched into the Machine Gun Depot at Seymour outside Melbourne where he would begin to train in the use of the Vickers Heavy Machine Gun. Vickers guns required a team of up to eight to transport, mount, load and fire. On 21st June, the 13th reinforcements for the 7th MGCoy boarded the transport “Suevic” and sailed via South Africa and Sierra Leone for England; arriving in Liverpool on 26thAugust.
 
Jacob and the other reinforcements travelled down to Rollestone on Salisbury Plain to be taken in by the 7thBrigade Training Battalion where Jacob was transferred to the reinforcements for the 26th Battalion, part of the 7th brigade of the 2nd Division AIF. While in training at Fovant, Jacob was promoted to acting lance corporal on 29th November 1917. He was to supervise a draft of reinforcements which departed from Southampton on 27th December and on 1st January 1918, Jacob was taken on strength by the 26thBattalion. He reverted to the rank of private. It had taken him a year to join the war.
 
During the winter of 1917/18, the AIF was withdrawn front frontline duties to allow for rest, recreation, equipment and manpower replacements after a gruelling 6 months in the Ypres salient in Belgium. Once brought up to strength, the battalions of the AIF began to be put back into the trenches to hold the line in Belgium.
 
The later part of 1917 produced a change in the strategic situation as far as the German command was concerned. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia brought about the end to fighting on the Eastern Front. A peace treaty between Germany and Russia released up to sixty German divisions which, once re-equipped and re-trained, could be used to press home a distinct advantage on the Western Front. The window for exploiting this advantage was however rather small as the entry of the United States into the war and an expected surge in troop numbers from July 1918 onwards would swing the advantage back to the Entente. The German commander, Ludendorff had only a short time to press home his advantage.
 
The British Commander, General Haig, was fully expecting a German assault in the spring of 1918 but he guessed incorrectly that the main thrust would be aimed at the Ypres salient in Belgium, where he had stationed his most reliable troops; the AIF. When Operation Michael began on 21st March 1918, the main assault was aimed not at the Ypres sector but along the line of the Somme River in the Picardy Region of France, the scene of so much fighting and hard won victories in 1916.
 
The British 5th Army, which was holding the line astride the Somme was unable to hold the German onslaught which in some places amounted to a five times numerical advantage. As the British retreated, often in disarray, the German Stormtroopers retook all of the gains made by the British in the Somme campaign of 1916 and early 1917 and were within a few days of capturing the vital communication city of Amiens. If Amiens fell, Haig might well lose the war; the situation was deadly serious.
 
Haig ordered his most successful and battle-hardened troops, four of the five divisions of the AIF in Belgium to race south to establish a defensive line in front of Amiens and to shore up his British Divisions. The 26thBattalion and the other three battalions of the 7th Brigade began their journey south on the 5th April to take up positions on the Amiens defensive line on the Ancre River, a tributary of the Somme, between Amiens and Albert.
 
April was crucial month for the AIF defenders. Haig issued his famous “Backs to the wall” speech to emphasize the seriousness of the situation and Australian troops fought decisive engagements at Dernacourt and Villers Bretonneux. By the beginning of May, the situation had stabilized and the German advance had been halted just short of Amiens.
 
Major General John Monash, Divisional Commander of the 3rd Division AIF, proposed a period of what he called “peaceful penetration” to harass the enemy while resources could be organised for a counter offensive. During this period, the 26th Battalion was regularly rotated into the front line to conduct night time raids, pour harassing fire from batteries of heavy machine guns across no man’s land and to generally unsettle the enemy. After one such tour into the front lines at the end of May, the 26th was relieved by the 25th Battalion. The 26th moved back to the support trenches, one platoon at a time. The war diary records that the relief was achieved without incident, save for the last platoon which was spotted and artillery was called down. The last two men in the file received a direct hit killing both instantly. One of those killed was Jacob Truss, killed in action on 31st May 1918.
 
Jacob was initially buried in a temporary grave with a suitable grave marker. His mother was informed of his death and a local solicitor from Kingaroy acted as executor of Jacob’s estate. In his will he bequeathed 10 shares in a bacon factory at Murarrie to his brother, Fred, in Oakey. His three sisters, Frederica, Annie and Gertrude received fifty pounds each and his mother was granted one hundred pounds. Any assets remaining went to George Truss, with whom Jacob had been farming at Kumbia.
 
At the end of hostilities, Jacob’s remains were exhumed from his temporary grave and reinterred in the Buire L’Ancre Communal Cemetery; a small village cemetery which mainly contains local civilian burials with the exception of six re-burials from the war. Most of those are casualties from the Somme campaign of 1916. Jacob’s family chose the following inscription for his headstone: BY GRACE YE ARE SAVED THROUGH FAITH.