Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 58  FINNIMORE William Esk                        11th Machine Gun Company
 
William Finnimore, as his name suggests, was born at Esk in the Brisbane Valley to parents William and Mary. He attended school at Esk. The family moved to the Wondai district where they were employed at Boondooma Station on the Boyne River. At the time of William’s enlistment, he reported his occupation as labourer, which would suggest that he worked in a range of tasks on the station such as fencing and handling stock.
 
William enlisted at the Adelaide Street Recruiting Centre on 28th February 1916. He stated his age as 22 years and two months. William named his mother, Mary Finnimore of Boondooma Station via Wondai as his next of kin. He reported to the Rifle Range Camp at Enoggera on 1st March and was taken in to the 11thDepot Battalion. On 4th April, William was allocated to the reinforcements of the 4th Pioneer Battalion but one month later he was transferred to the 11th Machine Gun Company which was being assembled at the Chermside Camp.
 
The war diary of the 11th MG Coy describes how the newly raised unit did not have time to train with machine guns as there was a need for every man in the unit to qualify to a minimum standard of musketry before they could be deployed overseas. Barely one month after joining the 11th MG Coy, William and the rest of the unit boarded a train which took them to Wallangarra where they switched to a NSW gauge train to continue to Sydney. The company boarded the “Borda” on 5th June and set sail for Egypt where they went into camp at Tel el Kabir on the Suez Canal in July.
 
The short stay in Egypt provided time for the company’s horses to be off loaded and given veterinary care and exercised before resuming the sea journey from Alexandria to Marseilles where they boarded a troop train to Le Havre and then took another ship for the final leg of the journey across the English Channel. The company arrived at the Machine Gun Details Depot at Grantham and set about the business of learning the operation of the Vickers Heavy Machine Gun.
 
The Vickers was based on a design originally patented by an American, Hiram Maxim. As the name implies, it was a heavy weapon; not because of the calibre of the rounds which were standard .303 inch cartridges, but due to the weight of the gun and its component parts. The gun had a barrel that was cooled by a water jacket which gave the gun its distinctive profile. A gun team would consist of a gun layer, and two others who fed the cloth ammunition belts, changed out barrels and maintained the water supply to the water jacket. A further three men would be needed to break the gun down and carry spare parts when the gun had to be moved on a small hand cart or a horse drawn wagon if the distance was too great. In spite of the difficulty in transporting, the Vickers was an excellent weapon due primarily to the fact that as long as ammunition could be kept up and barrels changed at regular intervals, it could be fired for periods of several hours at a rate of several hundred rounds a minute. The newly arrived 11th Machine Gun Company had to work very hard to acquire the necessary skills required before being sent to the front.
 
The 11th MG Coy was attached to the 11th Brigade of the 3rd Division of the AIF. The entire 3rd Division was assembling at Larkhill on Salisbury Plain and was trained to a high state of readiness under the command of the Divisional Commander, Major General John Monash. Monash and his Australians were of great interest to the British public (the other 4 divisions of the AIF spent 1916 fighting in France) and the King Himself, George V, travelled down to Larkhill to meet Monash and inspect the troops. Monash was a great organiser and he planned a review parade of all 22,000 men in his division to march past as Monash and the King sat easily of their horses taking the salute and chatting in English and German (both had German heritage). The war diary of the 11th MG Coy noted the arrival of the King on 27th September and that the gunners were part of the parade.
 
Training for the 3rd Division was concluded at the end of October and on 23rd November 1916, the 11th MG Coy boarded a ship at Southampton and sailed for Le Havre and then moved on to take up position in the rear of the front in the Armentieres sector. The company war diary records the guns providing indirect harassing fire across no man’s land while in the line, interspersed with periods behind the line in reserve or rest and training. There is also mention of providing a barrage to support trench raids by small parties of men from the 11th brigade battalions. On 30th March, while occupying the line at Ploegsteert, William was promoted to Lance Corporal.
 
The 3rd Division had been trained in England to be part of a huge British offensive in Belgium. The offensive began on 7th June 1917 at Messines with the exploding of 19 underground mines followed by a rapid infantry advance. The explosions rocked the German defences and left craters in the ground that exist to this day. The British successfully pushed the German defenders off the Messines Ridge but had to withstand counter attacks which went on for the next three months.
 
The 11th war diary records that the company was involved in a barrage along a divisional front east of Messines when two men were killed, one of whom was William Finnimore, and three wounded. The casualties were almost certainly caused by artillery fire. There is no record of William being buried. His mother, who was by that time a widow, was granted a war pension and received a small parcel of her son’s personal effects.
 
Like so many who fell during the Passchendaele campaign in 1917, William’s remains were never located. He is commemorated on the stone tablets of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres. There are 54,000 names of British and Dominion Soldiers recorded on the Menin Gate. To commemorate this sacrifice, the citizens of Ypres each evening since 1928 (with only a brief pause during German occupation 1939 – 1944) conduct a memorial service under the arches of the Menin Gate. All traffic is stopped and a simple ceremony is held including the laying of wreaths, the recitation of the Ode, and the playing of the Last Post by the city’s bugle corps.