Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 5477  McMONAGLE  William          16th Battalion
 
William McGonagle was born in 1896 in Lanarkshire near Glasgow to James and Sophia McGonagle. William attended a local Catholic School. In 1909, the McGonagle family, James and Sophia and their six children boarded the “S.S. Rippingham Grange” in London for the voyage to Brisbane. William, the eldest of the six children was listed on the ship’s passenger list as 13.
 
Perhaps after a short stay in the immigrant depot at Kangaroo Point, the family moved to the South Burnett where they took up land at Ellesmere between Kumbia and Nanango. William worked on the family farm and began contributing to the Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society which had a branch in Nanango. William travelled to Brisbane on 8th September 1915 to enlist. He gave his age as 19 years and 10 months and stated his occupation as farmer of Ellesmere via Kingaroy. William named his father, James, as his next of kin.
 
On 28th October, William was allocated to the 1st Company, Australian Mining Corps with the regimental number 217, and embarked for overseas on the “Ulysses” in Sydney on 20th February 1916. When the transport arrived in Freemantle on 1st April, William was off loaded. His file simply records “sick” but a medical form states “mental instability.” William was treated in a hospital in Freemantle and then rather curiously was re-enlisted and was given a different regimental number; 5477, and placed in the 17threinforcements of the 16th Battalion; a Western Australian and South Australian battalion. On that occasion, William gave his religion as Church of England instead of Roman Catholic.
 
William re- embarked for overseas on the “Itona” on 17th April 1916 and was marched into the AIF transit camps in Egypt five weeks later. The 16th Battalion, an original Gallipoli battalion, had been split to form the cores of two reconstituted battalions with numbers in both the 16th and the 48th being made up of reinforcements recently arrived from Australia. William’s echelon of reinforcements was not immediately required by either battalion and were instead sent to the AIF Depot at Etaples on the French coast south of Boulogne in June 1916.
 
The beginning of the Somme campaign on the Western Front provided the first exposure to trench warfare for the four divisions of the AIF. William was sent to his battalion from Etaples just prior to the AIF’s involvement on the Somme. The 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF were put into the battle for Pozieres in July and August 1916. The 4th Division, which included the 16th Battalion relieved the 1st and 2nd Divisions at Pozieres and then continued the offensive at Mouquet Farm. The AIF sustained 23,000 casualties at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm and William was fortunate to avoid injury in his first exposure to battle.
 
During September and October 1916, the 4th Division was sent north into Belgium to strengthen the Ypres salient but by December was back on the Somme in the trenches in front of Flers. Once winter had the exposed troops in the trenches in its grip, all possibility of mounting an offensive evaporated. The men of the AIF had to deal with frosts, snow, frozen ground and impassable roads.
 
While still manning the trenches on the Somme front, William was evacuated with acute diarrhoea. On 11thMarch 1917, he began a journey via field ambulance and casualty clearing station to the 12th Canadian Hospital at Rouen where William was diagnosed with colitis.
He was taken to England on the Hospital Ship “Panama” where he was admitted to the Birmingham War Hospital on 17th April. Once his condition was stabilized, William was transferred to the Australian Hospital at Hurdcott where he was granted a two week furlough before reporting back to the infantry depot at Perham Downs.
 
William was passed fit for active service in July and after two weeks at the Etaples Depot was taken on by his battalion on 4th August in the rear areas in Flanders. While William had been in England, the focus for the British forces had shifted from France and the Somme to Belgian Flanders and the Ypres salient. In June 1917, the Battle of Messines Ridge began the 3rd Battle of Ypres, which is referred to more commonly as the Battle of Passchendaele.
 
Once the Messines Ridge was secure, the British Command could embark on a series of small “bite and hold” offensives that would move the front line westward from the ramparts of Ypres along the line of the Menin Road, then Polygon Wood, Broodseinde and finally Passchendaele. The Battle of Menin Road, which involved the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF, was successfully prosecuted in the middle of September. The next step was to take a small forested wood, Polygon Wood, with elements of the 4th and 5th Divisions of the AIF.
 
The majority of the fighting by the Australians fell to the 5th Division which had not been in action since the disaster of Fromelles more than a year before; while the 4th Division had a relatively easy time on the advance line between the village of Zonnebeke and Polygon Wood. Men from both the 4th and 5th Divisions were seen roaming around looking for souvenirs which astounded the men from the British units.
 
The only setback to what was a perfectly exploited attack on 27th September was that battalions of the 4thBrigade, including the 16th Battalion, got too close to the creeping barrage during the advance and after taking some casualties from friendly fire began to pull back. The situation was saved by the intervention of Captain Bert Jacka of the 14th Battalion, who had won Australia’s first VC at Gallipoli, and who rallied the men to continue the advance.
 
It may have been during this series of events that William was killed. There is no record of a burial and no enquiries were made through the red cross into William’s death. His file simply states Killed in Action 27thSeptember 1917. His death was most likely due to an artillery shell. Once a death certificate was provided, William’s estate could be wound up with his father being the sole beneficiary. The secretary of the Sacred Heart Branch of the Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society in Nanango provided a small death benefit to the McMonagle family.
 
In spite of the efforts of the Graves Registration Units after the war, no trace was ever found of William McMonagle. He is instead among the 54,000 men from Britain and the Dominions who lost their lives in Belgium during the conflict and have no known grave. They are commemorated on the tablets of the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres where each evening, the citizens of the city commemorate the sacrifice of those young men with a ceremony which concludes with the recitation of the Ode and playing of the Last Post.