Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Leonard Harold Stubbin #4138 31st Battalion

Len Stubbin was born at Boonah on 14th February 1898 to parents Thomas and Amelia Stubbin. His father was a successful businessman in Boonah as a land agent, auctioneer and produce merchant. When Len left school his father employed him in the family business to work as a carter alongside his elder brother Robert.

Len presented himself for enlistment in Brisbane on 24th May 1916. He gave his age as 18 years and 4 months and named his mother Amelia as his next of kin. After a time in a depot battalion and a few weeks in hospital with influenza, Len was drafted as a reinforcement for the 31st Battalion.

On 21st October 1916, the 10th reinforcements for the 31st Battalion boarded the “Boonah” in Brisbane for England. Len had allocated 3/- of his daily pay to his mother. The “Boonah” docked in Plymouth on 10th January 1917 and the reinforcements marched out to the 8th Training Battalion on Salisbury Plain. At the end of April 1917, Len was on the move via Folkstone and Havre to join up with his battalion.

The 31st Battalion was part of the 8th Brigade of the 5th Division AIF. On the 19th and 20th July 1916, the men of the 5th Division were tasked with an attacked against the heavily defended German positions at Fromelles. The attack was supposed to draw German reinforcements away from the major battles which had begun on 1st July on the Somme. The Australians had only been in France for a short time and had only been in the frontline for three days before being ordered over the top into murderous machine gun fire.

The 5th Division at Fromelles suffered a staggering 5,500 casualties in a 24 hour period and the 31st Battalion recorded 500 men killed, wounded or captured. Even men who had survived Fromelles were haunted by the experience. The well-known Boer War veteran soldier Brigadier “Pompey” Elliott cried when he saw what had happened to his men. Elliott suffered from PTSD until he took his own life in 1935. Fromelles was the first major battle fought by the Australians in France and the losses sustained effectively removed any military capability from the division for most of the war. In later times, Fromelles became to be remembered as an example of the terrible waste of human life. Most recently, great efforts have been made to locate massed graves at Fromelles and to use DNA testing to identify remains; such is the power of the battle in contemporary society.

When Len joined the 31st in May of 1917, the battalion was still in a rebuilding phase, spending little time in the front line. The battalion fought only one major engagement in 1917 at Polygon Wood in September. The winter and early spring of 1917/18 were spent in comfortable billets in Flanders with the occasional rotation into the line near Messines. On 13th March 1918, Len was granted three week’s leave in England. While he was on leave, the German Spring Offensive; Operation Michael, began with a headlong assault on the British 5th Army along the Somme valley. When Len returned to duty on 4th April, the 31st were in positions around the junction of the Somme and Ancre Rivers at Corbie.

The ground around Corbie was virgin territory and unlike the parts of the Somme further east, contained no substantial entrenchments or solid defences. On 10th April the 31st moved up to Buzencourt on the bank of the Somme canal. There were no trenches. Several platoons of men from “A” Company bedded down in a barn to sleep. Witnesses claimed there were 34 men asleep in the barn when a German 5.4 heavy artillery shell landed on the barn. 10 men were killed outright and 17 were wounded. One of those killed instantly was Len Stubbin.

The ten killed were buried beside the wrecked barn under the direction of the platoon commander Lieutenant Miller. Len’s elder brother, Robert, who had seen active service on Gallipoli before returning to Australia and reenlisting in the Field Ambulance wrote to the Red Cross Enquiry Service to find out any information that he could relay back to his parents in Boonah.

Len and his mates who had been killed that day were eventually re buried at the Adelaide Military Cemetery near the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux.