Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
#3426 KEYS William (Jim) James       52nd Battalion
 
Jim Keys was born at Bega on the NSW South Coast to parents William (snr) and Winnifred Keys. At some stage the family moved north into the South Burnett to engage in farming. His parents were still living in the Kingaroy area during the First World War.
 
Jim presented himself for enlistment in Brisbane on 3rd November 1916. He reported his age as 34 years and stated he was married with two children. The AIF had suffered 23,000 casualties in battles at Pozieres, Mouquet Farm and Fromelles in the latter half of 1916. The Australian government was under considerable pressure to introduce conscription (as New Zealand and Canada had done) to provide the necessary reinforcements to maintain numbers. The plebiscite to decide on the conscription issue was held at the end of October 1916 and was narrowly defeated. Feelings in the general community were high and it was perhaps in this context that a 34 year old husband and father of two in a reserved occupation saw it as his duty to enlist.
 
After spending some time in a depot battalion at Enoggera, Jim was drafted as a reinforcement for the 42ndBattalion just before Christmas. He was granted some home leave but soon after his return to camp, Jim was reallocated to the 9th reinforcements of the 52nd Battalion. The 52nd reinforcements travelled by train to Sydney where they boarded the ‘Ayrshire’ on 24th January 1917 for the two and a half month sea voyage via the Cape of Good Hope and Sierra Leone. The Keys family have a photograph of ten of the reinforcements, including Jim, which was probably taken on the troopship before it departed Sydney.
 
Jim and his mates disembarked at the Devonport docks in Plymouth on 12th April and journeyed by train to the 4th Division Training Depot at Codford on Salisbury Plain. Training continued until Jim was hospitalised with abdominal pains in August. He was not fit to return to duty until December. On 5th January 1918, Jim was posted to the divisional signals school and then on the 2nd March 1918 left Southampton docks for the short trip across the English Channel to France. He marched into the 52nd Battalion lines at Locre on the French border with Belgium on 8th March. The 52nd was part of the 13th brigade of the 4th Division AIF.
The collapse of the Russian Front and subsequent peace treaty of December 1917 provided the German command with a force of up to 60 divisions which could be retrained and equipped during the winter in readiness for a spring offensive, in which the Germans would have a numerical advantage. The British Commander, General Haig, expected the main thrust of the offensive to be directed against Ypres and the Belgian ports and he had kept his most experienced and battle hardened force, the AIF, in Belgium to meet the expected threat.
 
On 21st March, the Germans launched their offensive with most concentration of forces not in Belgium but on the Somme in France. Within days, all of the gains paid for so dearly with British and Dominion blood on the Somme in 1916 were back in German hands. General Haig, feared that if the important city of Amiens capitulated the Germans would win the war. To meet the threat, Haig rushed his most dependable troops, the bulk of the AIF, south to the banks of the Somme and Ancre Rivers.
 
The first to move were eight battalions, the 52nd among them, comprising the 12th and 13th Brigades of the 4th Division which set off from their billets in the rear areas around the Belgian border on 24th March travelling by train then buses. After a few false starts and much confusion, the two brigades arrived at Beaumetz on 26th. At 10.00pm, the men began a 34 kilometre march south through the night with their left flank exposed to the enemy’s advance. They arrived at their designated position at Dernacourt soon after midnight on the 28th March.
 
The two brigades took up defensive positions under fire as they observed the ground in front of them. Dernacourt lay in the Ancre Valley, just south west of Albert, which had already fallen. The orders were to hold the line along a railway embankment which separated the Australians from the German attackers in the village of Dernacourt.
 
Under constant heavy artillery bombardment, the Australians occupying a low ridge looked across the railway embankment where at least two or more divisions of German storm troops and infantry were massing. The main part of the Australian defence was based on the railway embankment with companies from the 47th Battalion and 48th Battalion opposite the village, while three companies from the 52nd Battalion occupied a position to the right of the 47th. On the morning of the 5th April, the Germans began their attack.
 
Storm troopers took advantage of a railway underpass which marked the boundary between the 47th and the 52nd. Superiority of numbers forced a gap in the line into which the German infantry poured as both the 47thand 52nd were rolled back. Reports in the Red Cross files from three eye witnesses state that Jim Keys, who was a member of a Lewis gun team in one of the three companies occupying the embankment was shot in the head by a machine gun bullet, killing him instantly. The situation was so desperate that as the survivors retreated, they were unable to take their fallen comrades with them.
 
It was not until late in the day of the 5th April that a counterattack by the 48th and 49th Battalions saved the situation and pushed the Germans back across the rail line to the village. Dernacourt was a close run thing but in the end, two brigades of Australians held back two and a half divisions of Germans. Sadly, many Australians were unaccounted for, either having been killed or taken prisoner. Amongst the missing listed was Private William Keys, Killed in Action, grave unknown.
 
Jim had bequeathed his estate, which included some life policies and deferred pay, to his wife Gertrude with the instruction that she maintain and educate their children to a “standard suitable to their station”. His son was to be thus cared for until his 18th birthday but his daughter would not reach maturity until she turned 21.
 
It seems that Gertrude continued to live in the South Burnett, accepting her husband’s medals, memorial plaque while at an address at Memerambi, between Wondai and Kingaroy. William (Jim) Keys is commemorated on the stone tablets of the National Memorial to the Missing at Villers Bretonneux. He shares this place with the names of 10,00 other Australians who lost their lives in France and have no known grave. Jim was 35.