Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
# 1553 McDONALD Archie                 31st Battalion
 
Archie McDonald was the third son of Thomas and Margaret McDonald of Wyrallah near Lismore. Archie attended the Tuki Tuki Public School and then Lismore Public High School before joining his two elder brothers working on the family farm.
 
It would appear that Archie, and perhaps his brother Ronald, had moved into the South Burnett for work as Archie’s name appears on the Nanango War Memorial. Archie and Ron enlisted together in Brisbane on 23rdJuly 1915. Archie stated his age as 19 and Ron 21. Both gave their occupations as farmer and named their father, Thomas McDonald of “Maryvale, Wyrallah, Richmond River via Lismore, as next of kin.
 
The brothers reported to Enoggera Camp and were placed into the 1st Reinforcements of the 31st Battalion with consecutive regimental numbers. The 31st Battalion was comprised of mainly recruits from Queensland and Northern NSW and formed part of the 8th Brigade of the newly created 5th Division of the AIF. The 31stBattalion and the 1st Reinforcements trained together at Enoggera before travelling by trains to Melbourne where they went into camp at Broadmeadows and joined the other three battalions that made up the brigade.
 
On 5th November, the 31st Battalion and most of the reinforcements boarded the “Wandilla” but Archie and Ron were part of a cohort of 100 who boarded the “Bakara”. The two ships sailed in tandem for Freemantle and then on to Egypt, arriving in Suez on 7th December 1915. Reinforcements were drafted in to replace men who had been off loaded sick at Suez and Archie and Ron were taken on strength by the battalion and placed in “A” Company.
 
The Australian camps in Egypt during the early months of 1916 were a hive of activity as new battalions were created by combining Gallipoli veterans and recruits from the camps. The 31st Battalion had arrived in Egypt as a complete unit and was spared the disruption that reorganisation brought. In February, the battalion was posted to Serapeum as part of the Suez Canal defences to meet a possible Ottoman incursion. The battalion remained in the canal zone for several months changing camp from Serapeum to Tel el Kabir and then Moascar.
 
On 16th June, the 31st took trains to the docks in Alexandria for the six day crossing of the Mediterranean; arriving in Marseilles on 23rd June 1916. The 31st was one of the last battalions to arrive in France with some battalions having been on the Western front since March. Once disembarked, the battalion boarded several trains for a rail journey that took two days, arriving at Morbecque in Belgian Flanders where they went into comfortable billets. The comfort would not last long.
 
All four of the AIF Divisions in France were located in what was known as the “nursery” due to its suitability for introducing new troops to the routines of trench warfare. The ground was dead flat with only small rises of twenty metres or so scattered sparsely. The ground was so boggy that trenches could not be dug and instead raised breastworks made up of sandbags and wicker fence panels stretched in an unbroken line in front of the major city in the area, Armentieres, whose cafes provided ready accommodation for the occupying troops. On 8th July 1916, having only been in France for a few days, the 31st was posted to the Bois Grenier Line just south of Armentieres for a short stint in the reserve line. On 16th July, the 8th Brigade was posted into the front line for a attack against the 20 metre high Auber’s Ridge near the village of Fromelles. The entire 5th Division, supported by the 61st British Division were tasked with a frontal assault to take place on 17th July. The plan for the assault was the work of General Richard Haking and was virtually a repeat of a similar plan that he had employed in May against the same part of the front. On that occasion, and employing far more experienced troops, the outcome was quite disastrous. Haking wanted to use the 1stAIF Division for the July attempt but the divisional commander Walker, backed up by Birdwood, refused point blank to be part of what he surmised would be a disaster. The 5th Division was Haking’s second choice.
 
To allay fears of poor planning, Haking had a letter printed and distributed to the troops about to enter the battle which outlined the planned phases of the battle and timings of artillery barrages. The letter requested that those receiving the letter keep the contents secret. Due to rain which would hamper the ability of artillery range spotting, the assault was postponed until the 19th. When the 5th Division moved in to the start line the German defenders displayed large signs that said “Why so long; you are 24 hours late!” A previous sign read “ADVANCE AUSTRALIA – IF YOU CAN!”
 
At zero hour, the 8th Brigade battalions charged the enemy front line (which had been abandoned) and then went another 600 metres looking for the trench line that was their objective. They found a shallow ditch filled with water! The men of the 31st Battalion found themselves horribly exposed to grazing machine gun fire coming from three sides. The British 61st Division which was supposed to advance in line with the Australians received a severe hammering and with his troops exposed, Haking decided to call off further attacks. Unfortunately, this message was not received by the commander of the AIF’s 15th Brigade, “Pompey” Elliott who sent his Victorians out to be mown down. He wept as the survivors of the charge dragged themselves back to the start trench.
 
The attack on Auber’s Ridge, which was better known by the name of the village behind the German lines, Fromelles, proved to be the highest loss rate for a single day in the history of the Australian Army. Casualties for the 5th Division, which went into the line with about 18,000 men were appalling. There were 5,500 casualties; 2,000 killed, 1300 missing presumed killed with the remainder wounded. Most of the junior officer corps had been wiped out. The division was finished as a fighting force for the rest of 1916.
 
The war diary of the 31st indicates that Archie and Ron were in the first wave of attackers who charged out of the jump off trench on 19th July. When the battalion was relieved, a roll call revealed that of the 900 men who had gone out, 71 had been killed, 410 wounded and there were 80 missing – more than a 50% attrition. Among those listed as missing were Archie and Ron McDonald. Ron McDonald was located in a hospital at Rouen with bullet wounds to his arm and hand, but of Archie there was no news.
In March 1917, the McDonald family back at Lismore received Archie’s identity disc which had been forwarded to the authorities by the German military. The existence of the disc indicated that Archie’s body had been recovered from the battlefield and buried at an of those who have no known grave unknown location. In due course, Archie McDonald’s name was added to the 1300 names of those who have no known grave inscribed on the stone tablets of the VC Corner Australian Cemetery and Memorial on the old front line.
 
Fromelles had a profound effect on the Australian community, both during the war and in the years that followed. This was felt particularly in Victoria where “Pompey” Elliott was elected to federal parliament to advocate for the veterans of the 15th Brigade. His efforts were continued with the establishment of the “Friends of the 15th Brigade.” One of the members of the Friends was a retired teacher from Ballarat, Lambis Englezos.
 
Like many of the Friends, Lambis was haunted by the spectre of the 1300 missing. He began to scour records to attempt to solve the mystery of those lost men and in doing so came across German records which indicated that in July 1916, the Germans had dug five burial pits on the edge of a field near a copse named Pheasant Wood, not far from Fromelles. Bodies recovered from the battlefield were transported to Pheasant Wood on a light railway, where personal effects were collected before burial. In 2002, Lambis and his friends began to lobby the authorities about the location of the mass graves.
 
The matter came to public attention in 2006 when the 60 Minutes television program covered the Fromelles burials. In 2007 a survey of the field in front of Pheasant Wood revealed that there was a high likelihood of multiple burials at the site and archaeological excavations unearthed the remains of 250 soldiers. This sparked a worldwide search for descendants of men who had been declared missing at Fromelles in 1916. Personal artifacts, DNA, family history and distinguishing features such as previous bone fractures all played a part in identifying those Australians. As at Anzac Day 2024, 180 of the 250 soldiers have been identified; among them Archie McDonald whose identity was confirmed in 2014.
 
Archie was no longer one of the missing. His name was removed from the VC Corner Memorial and he was laid to rest in the Pheasant Wood Military Cemetery at Fromelles with an identifying headstone upon which his descendants requested the following inscription: BELOVED SON AND BROTHER, NATIVE OF WYRALLAH NSW, LEST WE FORGET.