RICHARDSON, Victor Albert
| Service Number: | 2676 |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | 8 August 1915 |
| Last Rank: | Private |
| Last Unit: | 12th Infantry Battalion |
| Born: | Gisborne, New Zealand, date not yet discovered |
| Home Town: | Wooroolin, South Burnett, Queensland |
| Schooling: | Gisborne, New Zealand |
| Occupation: | Farm labourer |
| Died: | Killed in Action, Warlencourt, France, 6 April 1917, age not yet discovered |
| Cemetery: |
No known grave - "Known Unto God" Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, Villers-Bretonneux, Picardie, France |
| Memorials: | Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, Kingaroy Stone of Remembrance, Villers-Bretonneux Memorial (Australian National Memorial - France), Wooroolin WW1 Roll of Honour |
World War 1 Service
| 8 Aug 1915: | Enlisted AIF WW1, Private, 2676, 12th Infantry Battalion | |
|---|---|---|
| 21 Oct 1915: | Involvement Private, 2676, 26th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '15' embarkation_place: Brisbane embarkation_ship: HMAT Seang Bee embarkation_ship_number: A48 public_note: '' | |
| 21 Oct 1915: | Embarked Private, 2676, 26th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Seang Bee, Brisbane | |
| 6 Apr 1917: | Involvement Private, 2676, 12th Infantry Battalion, --- :awm_ww1_roll_of_honour_import: awm_service_number: 2676 awm_unit: 12th Australian Infantry Battalion awm_rank: Private awm_died_date: 1917-04-06 |
Richardson Family - Wooroolin
William Richardson was born in Selby Yorkshire and immigrated to NZ with his parents sometime in the mid 1870's where he married Helen Jones in 1893. William and Helen Richardson and their eleven (11) children moved from Gisborne, NZ to Wooroolin in 1910. Their 12th child was born at Wooroolin in 1912. The family travelled on the SS Maheno across the Tasman Sea. In 1935 the Maheno was washed ashore at Fraser Island during a cyclone.
William & Helen Richardson bought portion 150v in the Parish of Wooroolin when they arrived from NZ in 1910. The farm remained in the family until very recently.
Two of their sons enlisted in the Australian Army during WW1. I have a wonderful photo of the Wooroolin Football Team taken in 1914 which includes the Richardson brothers as well as my Grandfather, Alf Jones.
In 2021 Elizabeth Caffrey spoke at the Wooroolin Anzac Day service. Her address included these words on the Richardson men. The Richardson brothers were just lads, young farmers from Wooroolin when they went off to war in 1915. Noble was 19 and Victor had just turned 18.
Richardson Noble William - 25th Battalion, A Company – SRN 215
Nobel Richardson was 14 years old when his family moved from New Zealand to Wooroolin in 1910. He worked on the family farm as well as labouring for others in the district.
On 26 Feb 1915 Nobel joined the Australian Army 25th Battalion, A Company at Wondai. Nobel embarked with his Unit from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A60 Aeneas on 29 June 1915.
Noble Richardson was 19 years and 5 months old when he enlisted. He stood 5 feet 8 ½ inches in his socks and had a fair complexion with sandy hair and blue eyes. His distinguishing features were that all his upper teeth missing – wore false teeth. He also had a large scar on lower part of left leg.
Nobel served 3 years Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front! One of the lucky ones to return home. Noble saw action in Gallipoli briefly before his transfer with the 26th Battalion to France, eventually promoted to Sergeant. He came home in 1919.
But I am loving his story in an Australian Newspaper about the Shooting down of the famous Red Baron. Thanks June Stebhens for this wonderful article.
“Mr Noble Richardson, then a Sergeant with A Compony, 25th Battalion, AIF was sitting outside the company cookhouse at Dermacourt on April 21 when his dinner was interrupted by the arrival of an enemy aircraft with decorated wings.
He writes “it was otherwise a quiet evening with no other plane in sight. I immediately he would get some nice photos for the Jerry artillery to use and blow us to bits the next morning.
Being in charge of the Lewis Guns I had them set up ready for night work. I grabbed a Lewis Gun and began shooting at him. He replied with great accuracy, snicking the ground all round me and getting a hit on my turntable. I had intended … it out with him but was getting no result until I remembered that we had received our first … of tracer bullets. Quickly I pulled the magazine off and was lucky enough to get a magazine loaded with tracers.
The first burst showed that at the height he had I had the wrong range and was shooting away behind him. I was able to put the next burst right into the plane as he flew overhead making the sparks fly. As he came back I got another burst into the plane. It seemed to stagger and right itself. It glided away not towards but right into our sector.
It took a semicircular course and followed a ridge right back, losing height all the way. It was getting very low before anyone fired at it.
A few seconds later a real machine gun bombardment set in from an area where other Australian troops were stationed. A gunner there was credited with him, but the medical report was that the Count was dead before reaching there.
Why has Mr Richardson left it so late to make his claim? He explained that the soldiers around him dived for cover when the attack started so they didn’t see anything. Furthermore at the time he didn’t have any idea who was flying the plane.
When the official reports of the Red Barons death was posted Mr Richardson unfamiliar with the name of the location where the plane crashed did not realise at first that it was nearby.
I did not put in a claim thinking it was too late but I have always been quite sure that my tracer bullets got him.
After the war he told a few people but nobody would believe him “You’d claim you did something and everyone would call you a liar. It was like that.”
So he forgot about it until last week….
Nobel returned to Wooroolin in Apr 1919 but moved to Stanthorpe about 4 years later then to Rockhampton area before eventually settling in Buderim in the 1950’s. He married Agnes Carter in 1944.
Nobel served in the VDC during WW11. He died in 1983 and is remembered at Buderim Lawn Crematorium and Memorial Gardens where Agnes joined him in 2001.
Richardson Victor Albert - 26th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement – SRN 2676
Victor was 12 years old when his family moved from New Zealand to Wooroolin in 1910. He also worked on the family farm as well as labouring for others in the district. He is included in the Wooroolin Football photo taken in 1914 and includes his brothers as well as my grandfather Alf Jones.
On 3 Aug 1916 18 year old Victor Richardson travelled to Brisbane and enlisted in the Australian Army with John Fay who worked on the Richardson farm.
Victor Richardson was 18 years and 1 months old when he enlisted. He stood 5 feet 7 ½ inches in his socks and had a fresh complexion with auburn hair and blue eyes. His distinguishing features was a large scar below left knee.
Victor embarked with his Unit from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A48 Seang Bee on 21 October 1915. Thanks to Elizabeth Caffrey we know that Victor was wounded in action at Pozieres and hospitalised suffering shellshock. Once again, historian Charles Bean, has the words, describing men in shellshock at Pozieres as... ‘driven stark raving mad… any amount of them could be seen crying… sobbing like children, their nerves completely gone…’
Those who suffered from severe ‘shell shock’ in WW1 were often shunned as shameful cowards lacking in moral fibre. Today we fully accept that service men and women returning from combat may experience post war traumatic stress and we help them to heal. Victor was sent back to that horrific battlefield where he was killed in action a few months later. He, too, has no known grave and is remembered on the Villers Bretonneux Memorial. He was only 19.
Lest We Forget
Submitted 21 April 2023 by Carol Berry
Biography contributed by Ian Lang
#2676 RICHARDSON Victor Albert 26th / 12th Battalions
Vic Richardson was one of 11 children born to William and Helen Richardson of Gisborne, a port city in the East Cape Region of new Zealand’s North Island. Vic attended school in the Gisborne area. The family emigrated to Queensland in 1910, when Vic was 12, and took up a farming block at Wooroolin which they named “Waimata” after a district near Gisborne.
Vic Richardson and Jack Fay, a young man a few years older than Vic who worked on the Richardson farm, both attended the Brisbane recruiting depot in Adelaide Street on 3rd August 1915 and enlisted together. Both stated their occupations as labourers. Vic had just turned 18, the minimum age for entry into the AIF, and should have had his parent’s permission to enlist. No such document is present in Vic’s file so it is open to conjecture as to how the recruiting officer passed this young lad with a shock of red hair and freckles. Jack Fay was 23.
Vic and Jack embarked on the “Seang Choon” in Brisbane on 21st October 1915. The reinforcements probably thought that upon arrival in Egypt they would be going to join their battalion at Gallipoli; but by the time the troop transport docked at Alexandria, the Australian Forces were about to be evacuated from the peninsula. The reinforcements joined the large number of new enlistments in the camps along the Suez Canal to await final allocation to a battalion. Vic and Jack had obviously expressed a desire to remain together in their new assignment. Consequently, they were both taken on by the 12th Battalion on 1st March 1916 and four weeks later, as members of “C” Company, boarded a transport at Alexandria for the six day voyage across the Mediterranean to the French port of Marseilles.
The 12th Battalion, part of the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Division AIF was one of the original battalions raised at the outbreak of the war and was made up of men from the “outer states”; Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia. Upon arrival in France, the AIF which had grown to four full divisions was sent to the quiet sector of the western front near the city of Armentieres. The time spent there allowed the new men such as Vic and Jack to become acquainted with the routines of front line work.
The great British offensive of 1916 began on 1st July along the valley of the Somme River. Things did not go well. The British divisions of raw enlistments and conscripts were cut down by the withering fire of German machine guns with 60,000 casualties on the first day of the battle. After almost three weeks of fighting, but with very little gain in territory, the British commander, General Douglas Haig, committed his reserve forces, which included the four divisions of the AIF, to the battle. The 12th battalion, as part of the 1st Division AIF went into the line at Pozieres, a small village on the Albert/ Bapaume Road, on 24th July 1916.
During the capture of the village by the 1st Division, Jack Fay received a wound from a machine gun and was evacuated to a hospital at Boulogne. Vic survived the charges at Pozieres and remained in the front line again during the unsuccessful assaults against the heavily defended Mouquet Farm. The 3rd brigade had withstood almost 45 days of constant pounding by fierce artillery barrages, and when the brigade was finally withdrawn from the line, nearly every survivor was suffering from shell shock; including Vic Richardson who had just turned 19. Vic was sent to the divisional rest camp for two weeks and a telegram was sent to his mother informing her that her son had been “wounded.”
Both Vic and Jack marched back into the 12th Battalion billets on 1st September 1916. The 1st Division was moved briefly to the Ypres salient in Belgium before being sent back to the Somme. With the arrival of winter, there was little fighting and most efforts were directed at fighting off the effects of the harshest winter in forty years. Jack was sent to a Lewis Gun School in February 1917 to become acquainted with this light machine gun which was being distributed to the infantry battalions. Upon his return, and promotion to corporal in charge of a Lewis Gun team, Jack selected Vic to be in his team. The two mates remained together.
While the British forces in Picardy were enduring freezing temperatures, the Germans constructed a line of strong defences some distance behind their front line. They called the system the Seigfreid Fortifications but the British referred to it as the Hindenburg Line. Once the spring of 1917 allowed for movement on the roads again, the Germans began a tactical withdrawal eastward to the Hindenburg Line. The British 5th Army, which included most of the AIF, cautiously followed the withdrawal until they came up against a wall of barbed wire, concrete fortifications, pillboxes and reinforced trench systems at Lagnicourt, Noreuil and Bullecourt.
During a sustained action near the rifle range butts at Warlencourt around 10th April 1917, Vic Richardson as part of Jack Fay’s gun team received a fatal gunshot wound to the abdomen. Reports to the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Service stated that Vic, who apparently had a full mouth of false teeth, was buried close to the Warlencourt Butts. A few meagre possessions; photos, a belt and a brush were sent to Vic’s mother who was granted a pension of two pounds per fortnight. A month after Vic’s death, Jack was also killed and when Helen Richardson saw his name in the casualty lists, wrote to the authorities seeking news.
At the end of the war when the Australian Army’s Grave Registration and Recovery Units were scouring the battlefields for isolated graves, Victor Richardson’s final burial place could not be located. In 1938, some 20 years after the end of the First World War, the Australian Government constructed the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux. The memorial was dedicated by the newly crowned King George VI. The memorial records the names of over 10,000 Australian soldiers who lost their lives in France and have no known grave; Victor Richardson among them.
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