Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Leon Seymour CORBETT #1014 42nd Infantry Battalion

Leon Corbett was born at Morven, on the western railway line between Mitchell and Charleville to parents William and Florence Corbett in 1895. Some time before 1900, William Corbett walked out on his family leaving Florence to raise two boys, Leon and Stanley. Florence and the boys moved to Brisbane and both boys were enrolled at Coorparoo State School in 1900.

Once the boys were old enough, it would appear that they returned to the country where both were employed as drillers. Leon enlisted in Brisbane on 18th September 1915. He stated his age as 20 years, occupation driller and named his mother, Frances of Wilton Street, Woolloongabba as his next of kin. Leon’s brother, Stanley, enlisted in Toowoomba a few days later and both brothers entered camp at Enoggera together.

Leon and Stanley were both allocated to the 42nd Infantry Battalion, which was being raised at Enoggera as part of the 11th brigade of the 3rd Australian Division. While in camp, Leon trained as a signaller. When the 42nd embarked for overseas in Sydney on 5th June 1916, Leon and Stanley are listed with successive regimental numbers.

The 42nd Battalion landed at Southampton on 23rd July and marched into the training camp at Larkhill where the 3rd Division was being assembled under Divisional Commander Major General John Monash. In September of that month, the brothers had a period of leave and upon their return to camp, both reported to the field ambulance with a dose of gonorrhoea.

The entire 3rd Division crossed the English Channel to Northern France in November 1916 where they began detailed training for a huge offensive that was planned for the Ypres salient in the summer of 1917.

Leon’s file contains no entries for the entire period of service from November 1916 until March 1918. In that time, attached to his battalion as a signaller, Leon was in action at Messines, Warneton, Broodseinde Ridge and Passchendaele.

While the 3rd Division was in a rest area in Flanders in March 1918, the Germans launched a massive offensive along the entire western front but concentrated at the point where the British and French armies stood side by side holding the line in the valley of the Somme. Within just a few days, all of the gains made at such cost by the British forces in 1916 were overrun. The British 5th Army collapsed in front of the onslaught and the vitally strategic city of Amiens was threatened. In an effort to stem the German tide, Field Marshall Haig ordered elements of the 3rd and 4th Division of the AIF to travel at all available speed to dig in in the face of the advance on the crucial junction of the Somme and Ancre Rivers just east of Amiens.

The 42nd Battalion travelled through night and day, without rest or hot food to reach their defensive position on 27th March 1918. Three days later, while laying telephone cable to outpost positions, Leon Corbett was Killed in Action. He was buried in a temporary grave near Corbie and his brother Stanley had erected a wooden cross over his grave with a suitable inscription.

At the end of the war the authorities wrote to Frances Corbett, who was working as a nurse to support herself, enquiring as to the whereabouts of Leon’s father as under the rules of the time, medals would be awarded to the father before the mother. Frances informed base records that she had not heard from her husband for more than 20 years and on the strength of that information, the Empire Medal and the Victory medal were despatched to Frances Corbett.

Leon’s remains were exhumed from the grave at Corbie and he was reinterred in the British War Cemetery at Heilly.