Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 3060  ATKINSON Francis Delta                    41st Battalion
 
Frank Atkinson was the eldest of three boys born to Edward and Ellen Atkinson. Frank was born at Delta Station outside Barcaldine but the family moved to Nanango in time for Frank to attend school and serve 4 years in the Senior Military Cadets.
 
Frank attended the Brisbane Recruiting Depot on 30th December 1916. He stated at the time he was 18 years old. A letter from Ellen Atkinson in Frank’s file indicates that her husband had abandoned the family around that time which may have been a catalyst for Frank’s enlistment. Frank was probably the family breadwinner as his brothers were much younger and the prospect of 5/- a day army pay was perhaps part of the reason for his enlistment. Probably at the same time, Ellen and the two younger boys moved to South Brisbane.
 
Frank spent some time in a depot battalion at Enoggera before being allocated to the 7th reinforcements of the 41st Battalion. The reinforcements proceeded by train to Sydney where they embarked on the “Wiltshire” on 7nd February 1917. The embarkation roll shows that Frank had allocated 4/5 of his pay to his mother.
 
The “Wiltshire” docked at Devonport in England on 11th April 1917 and the reinforcements took a train to the 11th Brigade Training Battalion at Fovant on Salisbury Plain. The reinforcements spent the next three months training in preparation for being sent to the front. The 41st Battalion, part of the 11th Brigade of the 3rdDivision AIF had been in Belgium since Christmas 1916
 
The British Forces, under General Douglas Haig, had begun a massive campaign in Belgium Flanders during the summer of 1917. Two of the AIF Divisions, the 3rd and 4th were included in the first action of the campaign at Messines, where the 11th Brigade performed a supporting role. In July, the 41st moved up to the front line where the battalion was forced to endure a sustained artillery barrage over a period of 18 days. Casualties were heavy and when the battalion was relieved, reinforcements, which had been sent overseas from Fovant, were called up from the base depot at Rouelles. Frank and his fellow reinforcements were taken on strength by the 41st on 18th August 1917.
 
The 41st was relieved from the front line rotations to spend time in the rear areas training, replacing and repairing equipment, and taking the opportunity to visit the divisional baths at Poperinghe where uniforms could be cleaned and new underwear issued. During this time, the battalion was also involved in a review by the Commander in Chief, General Douglas Haig.
At the beginning of October, the 41st Battalion once again began to move up to the front. By that stage of the campaign, fighting had progressed from the outskirts of Ypres to the base of the Broodseinde Ridge near the village of Zonnebeke. The 11th Brigade rose up from the jump off tapes on 4th October 1917 and closely followed the creeping artillery barrage to reach the blue line near a number of concrete blockhouses. Once on the blue line, the position was consolidated by establishing a number of forward posts. It was recorded that on 5th October, Frank Atkinson was killed in action. A follow up report from November 1917 by the 2ndAnzac Burial Corps records that Frank’s remains were buried on the battlefield in a temporary grave. At the conclusion of the war, burial teams scoured the battlefields for isolated graves but sadly many of these, including the resting place of Francis Atkinson were never located.
 
The place when Frank fell is probably very close to the blockhouse which is now incorporated into the cross of remembrance in the centre of Tyne Cot Cemetery, the largest Commonwealth War Cemetery in the world. Frank is not commemorated there but on the panels of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing at Ypres. He is one of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave.
Since the 1930s, with only a brief interval during the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign. The ceremony concludes with the laying of wreaths, the recitation of the ode, and the playing of the Last Post by the city’s bugle corps.