Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

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# 5436 CHRISTIANSEN Jens (Jim)       26th Battalion
Jens Christiansen was born in Laidley in the Lockyer Valley on 3rd October 1891, to parents Jens and Kirsten Christiansen. Jens appears to have been known as Jim to prevent confusion with his father. The family moved into the South Burnett around 1910 and took up farming near Hornley Siding on the newly opened rail line extension between Kingaroy and Nanango.
Jim presented himself to the recruiting office in Adelaide Street in Brisbane on 18th February 1916. He was 24 years old and stated his occupation as farmer. Jim was placed in a depot battalion at Enoggera for initial training. The AIF had been brought up to full strength during the early months of 1916 and there was at that time little demand for reinforcements. That situation would soon change with the involvement of the AIF in the Somme campaign in France in the latter half of 1916.
While still in camp at Enoggera, Jim was sent to corporal school on 13th June. He returned to Enoggera and was placed into the 14th reinforcements of the 26th Battalion as acting corporal. It was probably at this time that the studio portrait of Jim was taken, prior to his departure for overseas. Jim and the rest of the reinforcements boarded the “Itonus” in Brisbane on 8th August and disembarked at Plymouth in England on 18th October 1916.
The reinforcements made their way to the 7th Brigade Training Battalion at Rollestone on Salisbury Plain. Usual practice at the time was to send reinforcements who had held acting promotions during the voyage to England back to the ranks and Jim lost his stripes but two weeks later he was reinstated as acting corporal and on 24th January 1917, Jim was confirmed in the rank of corporal.
Jim proceeded overseas to France on 13th March 1917, and on the 19th March was taken on strength by the 26th Battalion which at that time was in support of a major action at Noreuil and Lagnicourt against the Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt. This marked the end of a gruelling campaign for the 26th on the Somme. The battalion was withdrawn for a period of rest and reorganisation.
In the summer and autumn of 1917, a major campaign was planned for the Ypres area in Belgian Flanders. The first part of offensive was a massive bombardment followed up by massed infantry on the Messines Ridge. Once this position was secured, the main thrust of the campaign could get underway in a series of “bite and hold” engagements by British and Australian troops along the line of the road which ran from the ancient city of Ypres towards the Broodseinde Ridge and the village of Passchendaele.
 
The first of the bite and hold attacks was the battle of Menin Road on 20th September. The 26th Battalion, as part of the 2nd Division of the AIF played a crucial part in securing the Westhoek Ridge in this battle. Menin Road was followed up by an attack against Polygon Wood by the 4th and 5th Divisions of the AIF before the 2nd Division was called back into the line for an attack against the Broodseinde Ridge and the village of Zonnebeke on 4th October.
 
The Flanders campaign had begun in dry summer weather but by October, unseasonal rains turned the battlefield and the approach lines into a sea of mud. Engineers and Pioneers struggled in mud up to their thighs to lay duckboards and corduroy roads that were quickly smashed by the German artillery. Saps leading up to the front line became full of mud and men struggled to move forward. It was recorded in the official history that on one occasion, it took 15 hours for an infantry company to move up 2,000 yards. The men who were laden down with sodden woollen uniforms and greatcoats, not to mention the 300 rounds of ammunition and a rifle were physically and emotionally exhausted by the time they reached the jumping off tapes. Some battalions which had a nominal strength of 1000 men were down to less than 200.
 
The 2nd Division was put into the line for an attack on the village of Poelcappelle, five kilometres north west of Passchendaele, on 9th October. The men of the three brigades included in the attack had been labouring laying duckboard tracks and man hauling artillery pieces into a position to support the attack on Poelcappelle. The attack on Poelcappelle ended in failure. The infantry slogged across muddy ground under a desultory artillery barrage before being driven back with the objective still in enemy hands. The decision by General Douglas Haig, Supreme British Commander in France and Belgium, to push on to Passchendaele would forever tarnish his reputation. His claim that it was only the weather that beat them was poorly received by the troops who would forever remember the hell that was Passchendaele.
 
In the attack at Poelcappelle, the 26th Battalion was initially in reserve but as the battle plan began to flounder, the commanders committed the reserve troops as well. When the filthy and exhausted troops filed back to the billets at Ypres, in was discovered that a large number of men were missing; one of whom was Corporal Jens Christiansen.
 
The Christiansen family back home at Coolabunia began making enquiries through the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Service about Jim’s fate. The family was stunned to receive a letter from a Corporal Young who apparently knew Jim quite well in which he stated that he had seen Jim and spoken to him in London on Christmas Eve 1917. This matter was treated quite seriously and the authorities in Melbourne were anxious to interview Cpl Young. Unfortunately, as in many cases such as this during the war, the claims had no substance. Lieutenant Brooks, who was in charge of Jim’s company informed the authorities in 1918 that there was no trace of Jim after 9th October and the only possible explanation was that Jim had been killed on 9th October and “his body had been destroyed beyond recognition by enemy artillery fire.” Jim was officially declared Killed in Action by a court of inquiry in May 1918.
 
In due course, Jens Christiansen, Jim’s father, signed for a parcel of his son’s personal effects which included a housewife, two pairs of knee pads, gloves, mittens and a shaving brush. Jens and Kirsten Christiansen each received a pension of ten shillings a fortnight. Jim Christiansen’s remains were never located. He is one of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave. Their names are inscribed on the Portland Stone Tablets under the arches of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in the city of Ypres (now Ieper).
 
Since the 1930s, with only the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign. The ceremony concludes with the laying of wreaths, the recitation of the ode, and the playing of the Last Post by the city’s bugle corps
The commemoration of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian war artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting, which now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, toured Australia during the 1920s and 30s and drew huge crowds.