Andrew HUME

HUME, Andrew

Service Number: 3237
Enlisted: Not yet discovered
Last Rank: Private
Last Unit: 47th Infantry Battalion
Born: Howard, Queensland, Australia, date not yet discovered
Home Town: Howard, Fraser Coast, Queensland
Schooling: Howard State School, Queensland, Australia
Occupation: Coal Miner
Died: Died of wounds, France, 29 March 1918, age not yet discovered
Cemetery: Doullens Communal Cemetery Extension No.1
Memorials: Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, Howard War Memorial, Shire of Howard Roll of Honour
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World War 1 Service

22 Dec 1916: Involvement Private, 3237, 47th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '19' embarkation_place: Sydney embarkation_ship: HMAT Demosthenes embarkation_ship_number: A64 public_note: ''
22 Dec 1916: Embarked Private, 3237, 47th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Demosthenes, Sydney

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Biography contributed by Ian Lang

 

Andrew Hume had spent his whole life in Howard. At the time of his enlistment at Maryborough on 20th September 1916, Andrew was a 33 year old miner. He named his sister, Mary Ellen Hume of Thomas Street, Howard as his next of kin. Andrew gave his address as Thomas Street as well and it is likely that he and his sister shared what had been his parents’ home prior to their deaths some years earlier. Letters in Andrew’s file indicate that he had a brother living in far north Queensland and two other sisters who were married and living in the Howard area.

 

Andrew reported to the Rifle Range Camp at Enoggera on 10th October and was placed into a depot battalion for initial training before being allocated as a reinforcement for the 47th Battalion. The reinforcements travelled to Sydney by train in December and boarded the transport “Demosthenes”. The embarkation roll shows #3237 Pte Andrew Hume, Miner of Thomas Street Howard. Andrew had allocated 3/- of his daily pay to a bank account in his name in Maryborough. The “Demosthenes” departed Sydney on 22nd December and sailed directly to England, arriving in Portsmouth on 3rd March 1917.

 

Andrew, and the rest of the draft of reinforcements marched into Codford Camp on Salisbury Plain, quite close to Stonehenge, where they received further training prior to being posted overseas. On the Western Front, he 47th Battalion as part of the 4th Division AIF had been badly mauled at Bullecourt in May 1917 before switching to the Ypres salient in Belgium where the battalion was again hit hard in attacking German defences at Messines in June. When Andrew was finally taken on strength by the 47th on 3rd July 1917, the battalion was in the rear areas resting, making good the losses sustained at Messines and preparing for the next rotation into the firing lines.

 

The campaign in Belgian Flanders in 1917 had begun well with significant gains made at Messines followed by similar success at Menin Road and Polygon Wood in September. It appeared to the planners on the British General Staff that they had finally hit upon a series of tactics which might deliver the final blow and end the war. The ultimate goal of the campaign was the capture of a small village on the Broodseinde Ridge; Passchendaele.

 

On 4th October, as elements of the 1st and 2nd Australian Divisions assaulted Broodseinde Ridge, heavy rain began to fall. It did not stop for two months. The countryside between Ypres and Passchendaele was low lying and farmers had for centuries been draining the fields using a system of canals which had been obliterated after three years of war. Constant artillery fire which churned up the ground compounded by incessant rain turned the battlefield into a sea of clinging mud in which men, animals and equipment floundered. On 12th October, the 47th battalion in conjunction with the three other battalions of the 12th Brigade were ordered into an attack on the village of Passchendaele. Platoons and companies became bogged down in mud up to their waists as they moved up to the start line. Artillery which was supposed to provide a covering barrage sank into the mud after firing one shell and had to be dug out again. Passchendaele proved to be a disaster, an heroic but futile struggle against the elements and the enemy. The British Commander Haig had thrown all five AIF Divisions at Passchendaele, which remained in enemy hands. The AIF was exhausted and in need of a long rest. Andrew had been fortunate to escape injury or illness during that period.

 

As the tired battalions marched into rest camps to the west of Ypres, they were able to shelter from the rain and snow in newly erected huts which were the invention of a British engineer, Major Peter Nissen. The huts allowed men to rest, have hot baths and receive a new issue of underwear while their woollen uniforms were washed and steamed to kill body lice. There were lots of sports, played on a company or battalion basis and the YMCA provided writing equipment for letters home. In the middle of winter, Andrew was detached to the 4th Canadian Tunnelling Company as a miner.

 

The tunnelling companies mainly dug underground shelters, headquarters and sleeping barracks in the soft clay around Ypres. Their skills had also been required to dig the 22 tunnels under the Messines Ridge where explosives were placed to be fired on the first day of that battle in June 1917. Some of the craters formed by those explosions are still in evidence today.

 

Andrew returned to his unit on 9th March 1918. The first half of 1918 would prove to be a decisive time for both sides on the Western Front. The previous year, the Russian Revolution had resulted in a peace deal on the Eastern Front which released a large number of German Divisions for redeployment to the west, creating a numerical advantage in Germany’s favour. This advantage would only be brief however because with the entry of the United States of America into the war, over one million doughboys were being drafted, trained, equipped and shipped to France. The British commander Haig guessed that he would face a German offensive in the spring of 1918. He guessed, incorrectly that the offensive would come in Belgium where he kept his best infantry, the AIF.

 

In fact the spring offensive occurred all along the front but was concentrated along the point where the French and British Armies stood side by side in the valley of the Somme. Operation Michael began on 21st March and the British Fifth Army which occupied the old Somme battlefields was outnumbered five to one. Within days the Germans had advanced from the Hindenburg Line retaking towns such as Bapaume and Pozieres that had cost so much blood in 1916. The important city of Albert fell on 23rd March and the vital communication city of Amiens was threatened. If Amiens fell, the French and British Armies would be split and the Germans could advance to the French Coast and win the war.

 

With his British Armies in tatters, Haig sent for his most reliable and formidable fighting force, the AIF. The 47th Battalion was among the first units to be mobilized. They had to travel from Poperinghe in Belgium to take up a blocking position in front of Amiens in the triangle formed by the confluence of the Somme and Ancre Rivers. The journey began in buses but as the roads became clogged with fleeing civilians and British units, the brigade commander ordered the men to strike out across country, with the advancing German army somewhere out on their left flank.

 

The battalions of the 12th Brigade marched through a night and a day with only a ten minute rest every hour. The men were in full battle kit carrying rifles, bayonets, ammunitions and trenching tools. The battalion cookers could not keep up with the pace and the men had to be satisfied with cold rations and limited fresh water. Their march covered 34 kilometres and when the brigade arrived at the designated defensive position on 27th March, the men had to dig in straight away to repel an enemy advance.

 

The 12th brigade had been ordered to relieve a shattered Scottish regiment which had been bravely holding back at least a division of storm troopers on a railway embankment near the village of Dernacourt. The position was not ideal. The Australians came over a ridge to look down a gentle slope which fell to the railway line. Across the line, the Germans were massing up to two and a half divisions in the village. There were no trenches as the war had never reached that far. The best the men could do was to dig shallow gun pits in the stony ground of the exposed slope.

 

On 28th March, the first enemy assault was made across the railway embankment. Sergeant Stanley MacDougall of Tasmania earned the 47th Battalion’s only Victoria Cross that day when he took on many attackers with a bayonet and then single handedly firing a Lewis Gun from the hip. There were numerous incursions by the enemy across the railway line that day. During once such attempt, Andrew Hume sustained serious gun shot wounds to his neck and upper chest. Andrew was taken by stretcher to the 3rd Canadian Stationary Hospital at Doullens. He was reported to be unconscious for most of the time. Andrew died of his wounds the next day, 29th March 1918. He was 36 years old.

 

Andrew was buried with full military honours in the Doullens Communal Cemetery with the Reverend Wilkinson in attendance. Eventually a permanent headstone was placed over his grave which in addition to his name rank and unit noted he was the son of the late John and Mary Hume, A native of Howard, Queensland.

Andrew had made a will in 1913 naming his sister Mary Ellen as sole beneficiary. By the time the estate was finalised, Mary Ellen had married and moved to Ascot in Brisbane. Andrew’s war medals and memorial plaque were sent to his brother, John, in Port Douglas. Andrew’s other sisters, Caroline Todd and Elizabeth Middleton continued to live in the Howard district.

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