Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
# 3593A  BERGIN John Loftus            47th / 25th Battalions
John Bergin was the only son of Ipswich parents John and Mary Ellen Bergin born around 1890. As a boy he attended a Christian Brothers School in Ipswich. At some stage, John began living in the Yarraman area where he may have lived with his married sister, Emma McKee.
When John enlisted in Brisbane on 31st October 1916, he stated his age as 26 years. He named his sister of Yarraman Creek as his next of kin. His occupation is shown as labourer, which was a general catch all for men who worked with their hands, but his sister when completing the Roll of Honour Circular stated his occupation as teamster. At the time Yarraman was a busy timber town.
Like most recruits, John was first placed into a depot battalion. On 10th January 1917, John was placed into the 19th reinforcements for the 25th Battalion. Due to periods of hospitalization and 17 days AWL followed by a stint in the stockade at Lytton Compound, John missed both the departures for the 19th Reinforcements in February and the 20th Reinforcements in June.
The authorities decided to transfer John to the 10th Reinforcements of the 47th Battalion and he embarked on the Militades in Sydney on 2nd August 1917, landing in Glasgow two months later. The embarkation roll shows that John had allocated 3/- of his daily pay of 5/- to a Miss Ida Dale of Yarraman. The reinforcements proceeded to the 4th Division Training Camp at Codford in Wiltshire. Prior to embarking for overseas, John made out a will naming Ida Dale of Yarraman as his sole legatee.
On 8th January 1918, fourteen months after enlisting, John finally landed in France. While in the transit camp he was transferred back to the 25th Battalion and a letter A was added to his regimental number. A week later he joined the 25th which was at that time rotating in and out of the front line near Warneton in Belgium. Even though winter was a relatively quiet time at the front, the battalion war diary records that several forward posts were constantly under fire by minnenwerfers (heavy trench mortars). This would have been a rude awakening for John who had no experience of this type of warfare.
In February 1918, the 25th were relieved from front line duties and the men enjoyed being in comfortable billets where they could rest, visit the divisional baths for clean underwear and take part in a variety of sports. After a month of recuperation, the battalion was back in the line providing working parties for trench repair, salvage and road making.
The British Commander, General Haig, was fully expecting a German assault in the spring of 1918 but he guessed incorrectly that the main thrust would be aimed at the Ypres salient in Belgium. When Operation Michael began on 21st March, the main assault was aimed along the line of the Somme River, the scene of so much fighting and hard-won victories in 1916.
The British 5th Army, which was holding the line astride the Somme was unable to hold the German onslaught which in some places outnumbered the defenders by a factor of five. As the British retreated, often in disarray, the German Stormtroopers retook all of the gains made by the British in the Somme campaign and were within a few days of capturing the vital communication city of Amiens. If Amiens fell, Haig might well have lost the war; the situation was deadly serious.
 
 In response to the German offensive, Haig ordered the bulk of the AIF (four of the five divisions) that was in Belgium to take up positions to defend Amiens 150 kilometres to the south. The 25th was warned to prepare for a move in late March and began to relocate to the south in early April, taking up positions near Ribemont. During this period, the 25th Battalion as part of the 2nd Division AIF acted as corps reserve. In May, the 25thbegan to spent time in the front line, harassing the enemy during daylight with accurate sniping and aggressive patrolling of no man’s land during the hours of darkness.
 
On 10th June, at the unusual time of dusk, the 25th Battalion protected by trench mortars mounted an assault against enemy outposts on a ridge at Morlancourt on the north bank of the Somme. The limited engagement was a success but John received wounds to his thigh and shoulder from an exploding shell. He was taken via a field ambulance to the 51st Casualty Clearing Station. The wounds were not serious and after a period at the CCs and a convalescent camp, John returned to duty with the 25th Battalion on 20thJuly.
 
For the British forces on the Somme in 1918, and particularly the four divisions of the AIF, July and August were pivotal in turning the balance of the war in their favour. Lieutenant General John Monash had been appointed as the Australian Corps overall field commander and he wasted no time in planning a small but highly successful assault at Hamel in July. Hamel proved to be a great success with the use of tanks, aircraft, artillery and deception all coordinated to work together. The British commander Haig ordered Monash to use the same technique for an even larger battle; the Battle of Amiens.
 
John Bergin had returned to the 25th in time for the battalion to play a supporting role at Amiens on the 8thAugust. Monash’s plan called for four divisions of the AIF to spearhead an advance supported by artillery, tanks, smoke and aircraft. Three divisions of Canadians and a British Division protected the Australian flank. The 25th Battalion had spent several days before the battle at a tank park near Amiens where they practiced with the Mark V tanks that would accompany them into battle and which would act as material support, carrying ammunition, water and entrenching material. On the actual day of the battle, companies of the 25thwere allocated to support the other three battalions in the 7th brigade as well as assisting with carrying for trench mortar companies and machine gun companies. The 25th also had responsibility for handlings prisoners captured in their sector.
 
At the end of the day, the four AIF Divisions had moved the front line forward by up to ten kilometres and the Garman defenders were in disarray. The German field commander, Ludendorff, called 8th August the “blackest day for the German army” from which they never fully recovered. The war which up to this point had been one of minimal gains of ground and massive loss of life had now become one of mobility. Monash continued to push his divisions along the line of the south bank of the Somme. By the beginning of September, the AIF had reached the great bend in the river at Peronne.
 
Peronne was a fortress town which had existed since before the Napoleonic Wars. It occupied a strategic position protecting the ground to the east and was itself protected by a small hill 100 metres high; Mont Saint Quentin. Monash was continuing his pursuit of the enemy along the line of the Somme and although his infantry was short of reinforcements he urged them to press on.
 
The 2nd Division AIF was tasked with a frontal assault on the Mont beginning on 1st September. Most battalions were down to less than 400 men (a normal battalion strength was 1000) and Monash had requested that the men yell and scream as they attacked up the hill to give the impression of a larger force. The Mont was heavily defended by a regiment of the Prussian Guard with numerous machine gun emplacements. Individual feats of bravery, sometimes using bombs or Lewis Guns fired from the hip resulted in a number of gallantry awards. The British commander Rawlinson sent a telegram to the 2nd Division HQ which in part read “The capture of Mont St Quentin by the 2nd Division is a feat of arms worthy of the highest praise……….I am filled with admiration at the gallantry and surpassing daring of the division in winning this important fortress.” In recognition of the success of the 2nd Division at Mt St Quentin, the memorial to the 2ndDivision was erected on the summit. The memorial originally depicted an Australian infantryman bayoneting an eagle at his feet. This statue was destroyed during the German occupation of WW2. A less confronting statue now depicts an infantryman standing at ease.
 
In gaining the summit, the 25th Battalion lost 30 men killed and 129 wounded. One of those killed was John Bergin. He was buried in a shell crater along with six other men from the battalion killed during the fighting at Mont St Quentin. A photograph of the graves is held in the Australian War Memorial collection. At the end of the war, the six graves on the summit of Mt St Quentin were exhumed and the remains reinterred in the Peronne Communal Cemetery extension. The inscription on John’s headstone reads: OUR HOME IS DARK WITHOUT THEE; WE MISS THEE EVERYWHERE.
 
Ida Dale received a wallet and a photograph belonging to John but surprisingly no one appears to have made a claim for his medals. A Mrs Flaws, a sister of John’s, wrote from Gayndah in 1945 inquiring about money she believed was owing from John’s estate.