Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Edward William LEO #7281 9th Battalion

Ed Leo was born in Kilcoy where he probably attended school before embarking on rural work that by the time of his enlistment in 1916 had taken him to Birdsville and Windorah as a stockman and horse breaker. It is doubtful that he ever had any association with the Linville district, however his mother Ann lived in Moore for a time and he had a brother, Patrick who was a farmer at Harlin. Ed’s brother Richard George Leo also enlisted in the Great war and his name appears on both the Kilcoy and Linville memorials. It is more likely that Ed was listed on the Linville memorial because his brothers and mother lived in the district.

Ed Leo presented himself for enlistment in Charleville on 14th October 1916. He stated his age as 24 and gave his occupation as stockman and horse breaker. From Charleville Ed travelled by train to Brisbane and then on to Enoggera where he was placed in a depot battalion. At the end of November he was granted 16 days home leave. He stated that he wished to see friends and attend to business in Birdsville and Windorah. The railway ended at Charleville and the journey on to Windorah and Birdsville had to be undertaken by car.

Soon after Ed returned to camp, he was allocated as a reinforcement for the 9th Battalion. The reinforcements took a train to Sydney where they boarded the “Ayrshire” on 24th January 1917. The transport ship was headed for England via South Africa and Sierra Leone.
During the voyage, Ed reported sick to the ship’s hospital. He had contracted a dose of VD, probably while on leave in Sydney.

When the reinforcements arrived in Devonport on 12th April, they were marched into the 3rd Training Battalion. One month later, Ed was hospitalised with a severe case of mumps. Mumps was a highly contagious disease and it particularly affected the Australians who had very little resistance to it. It was several months before Ed was well enough to be posted to his battalion.

Ed crossed the English Channel to Havre and then on to Belgium where he was taken on strength by the 9th Battalion on 9th November 1917. The battalion, which was part of the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Division AIF had only recently come out of the Battle of Passchendaele and was in urgent need of reinforcements, rest and re-equipment. On 27th December, Ed was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal and in January 1918 he was sent off to brigade training school.

The allied armies facing the Germans on the Western Front were expecting a German offensive sometime in the first half of 1918; but their intelligence was unable to pinpoint where or when the attack would eventuate. Operation Michael began on 21st March 1918 with offensives along the valley of the Somme River in France and a concentrated push in the Ypres sector in Belgium. Within days, it was apparent that the British army on the Somme were incapable of holding the divisions of stormtroopers and most of the Australian forces in Belgium were rushed south to attempt to hold the onslaught.

The 1st Division however remained in Belgium to meet the German threat around Ypres. The 9th Battalion would remain in Belgium until the threat was neutralised. Time spent in support areas and training alternated with periods of up to five days manning the front line. On 22nd May, while participating in a march past in front of Brigade staff, Ed sprained an ankle. He was sent to 35th General Hospital in Boulogne and was out of action for two months. An inquiry was conducted to ensure that the accident was not self-inflicted (which would have been considered a crime punishable by a period of time on field punishment and a loss of pay). Ed’s file clearly states that the injury was an accident and the battalion war diary records that the ground on which the parade was conducted was very rough.

When Ed rejoined the 9th on 21st July 1918, the situation on the Western Front had changed. The German assault on the Somme had been met and then neutralised, primarily by Australian forces. On 4th July, the first offensive action by any British forces on the Western Front since the previous October succeeded in capturing the heights overlooking the village of Hamel. The strategies employed by the Australian Corps Commander John Monash at Hamel would be duplicated a month later at Amiens.

On the 1st August, the 9th Battalion along with the rest of the 1st Division finally received their orders to join the rest of the Australian Corps under Monash. The troops arrived in the assembly areas behind Villers Bretonneux on 6th and 7th August, too late to be included in Monash’s plans for the Battle of Amiens which was timed to begin at dawn on the 8th August. The results of that day were spectacular as the British forces, spearheaded by Australian infantry broke through the German lines into clear country beyond.

Monash and his staff had a month to plan Amiens but that degree of planning could not be sustained once the war became one of movement in the days after. On 10 August the 9th Battalion and the other three battalions of the 3rd Brigade entered the fight for the first time. While advancing across farmland on the southern bank of the Somme, companies of the 9th battalion came under heavy enfilading fire from enemy machine guns which had not been detected by aerial photographs. On 11th August, Edward Leo was reported killed in action.

There is no report of a burial and no enquiries were made by the family into the circumstances of Edward’s death. In all probability, he was buried by stretcher bearers or engineers on the battlefield but any marker of his grave was lost. Edward Leo is commemorated on the panels at the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux. His name is among the names of over 10,000 Australians who lost their lives in France and have no known grave.