Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

47 Battalion

Rank - Private

19 January 1917 Disembarked Plymouth

Son of Anders Christian Marius Andersen and Elna Andersen of Morningside, Brisbane.

# 2614 ANDERSEN Andrew Christian             47th Battalion
 
Andrew Andersen was the third child, and only son, of Anders and Elna Andersen. The family lived in the suburbs of Brisbane and Andrew attended Dutton Park State School in South Brisbane. According to a letter written by Andrew’s sister in the 1940s, Andrew moved to the Nanango district to take up dairy farming around 1906. His mother, Elna, who was by that time a widow accompanied Andrew to Nanango.
 
In September 1916, Andrew and his mother returned to Brisbane. Elna went to live with one of her daughters at Morningside and Andrew reported to the Brisbane Recruiting Depot to enlist on 6th September 1916. At the time Andrew was 28 years old. He was taken in immediately to the 6th reinforcements for the 47th Battalion and after the briefest of initial training embarked for overseas on the “Marathon” on 27thOctober.
 
After a two month voyage, during which Andrew spent some time in the ship’s hospital with diphtheria, the reinforcements landed at Plymouth and proceeded to the 12th Brigade Training Battalion at Codford in Wiltshire. The reinforcements spent the next four months completing their training in England before being deployed to Etaples in France, and finally joined the 47th Battalion in the rear areas behind the front in Belgium on 8th May 1917.
 
The British Field Commander, General Haig, planned for a totally British campaign, which included Dominion troops, in the Ypres salient in Belgian Flanders. The plan called for a series of battles in the summer and autumn of 1917, each of which created a stepping stone to the next objective. The first of these stepping stones was a ridge line which was occupied by the enemy and overlooked the ground that was to be used for the build up of British forces. The ridge ran almost due south from a position just outside Ypres, where spoil from a railway cutting had been dumped (the famous Hill 60) towards the village of Messines and on to Warneton on the French border.
 
The 47th Battalion, as part of the 12th Brigade of the 4th Division of the AIF was included in the order of battle for Messines. The preparations for the Battle of Messines were carefully planned. Large scale models of the terrain to be covered were constructed and all troops who were to take part, which included Andrew and the rest of the 47th Battalion, were walked through the models to familiarize themselves with their objectives. The general in charge at Messines had three and a half million artillery shells at his disposal which would be fired in the days leading up to the attack. In addition, British and then Australian tunnellers had been undermining the Messines Ridge for almost 18 months and had placed underground charges in tunnels directly underneath the German defences.
 
At 3:10 am on the 7th June 1917, 19 of the underground mines beneath the Messines Ridge were fired simultaneously. It was the largest man made explosion in history and the noise was heard in London.
 
Two Australian Divisions were included in the order of battle for the attack at Messines. The 3rd Division AIF had responsibility for the northern sector of the front while the 4th Division was tasked with attacking the second line of German trenches, the Oosstaverne Line, beyond the village of Messines itself as part of a second wave of attack. By the time that the 4th Division began to move up towards the line some 12 hours after the mines had been fired, they encountered difficulties.
 
After the initial confusion and disorientation caused by the mines, the Germans gradually recovered to mount a spirited defence. The German artillery rained down high explosive and shrapnel on the advancing infantry who due to the weight of the equipment they carried and the broken nature of the ground, made heavy going of the advance to the Oosstaverne Line. Close to a sunken roadway named “Hun’s Walk”, Andrew Andersen was killed, probably by an artillery shell. The official records note that he was buried 750 yards east of Messines, close to the furthest position reached by the 47th on the 7th June. Andrew was one of the almost 500 killed, missing or wounded from the 47th Battalion that day.
 
Andrew’s grave was at best a temporary affair and during the ensuing weeks of artillery that followed the 7thJune, all trace of the grave and Andrew’s remains was lost. Andrew was the sole means of support for his mother and after his death, Elna Andersen was granted a pension of two pounds per fortnight.
 
Andrew Andersen’s remains were never located. He is one of 56,000 British and Dominion soldiers, 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 Ypres
Since the 1930s, with 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.
In 1942, Andrew’s sister wrote to the military authorities requesting that Elna Andersen, who was by that time 88 years old, be granted the “Mother’s badge” to indicate that she had lost a son 25 years ago.