Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

BUNNAGE  Wilfred Charles   # 4433  15th/ 47th Battalion
 
Wil Bunnage was born in Leeds, Yorkshire. He emigrated to Australia with his parents Sarah and William at the age of 19 in 1913. The family settled at Hall Street, Jubilee Hall, Mount Morgan.
 
Wil presented himself for enlistment at the Rockhampton recruiting depot on 30th August 1915. He had recently turned 21 and so did not require his parents’ permission. Wil gave his occupation as labourer and his address as that of his parents in Mount Morgan. William Bunnage, when completeing the Roll of Honour Circular some years after Wil’s death stated his occupation as cabinet maker and french polisher. He also stated that Wil was associated with the Gracemere area.
 
Wil presented as an ideal recruit. He was 5’ 11” tall, quite tall for the time, and was in good physical condition. Wil was allocated as a reinforcement for the 15th Battalion. The 15th Battalion was a well known Queensland unit, commanded by Lt Col “Bull’ Cannan. The battalion had landed at Gallipoli on the first day and occupied the most dangerous position of Quinn’s Post for most of its tour.
 
Wil travelled to Brisbane on a railway warrant and presented himself to Enoggera Camp. Rudimentary training in drill and musketry followed. On 31st January 1916, Wil embarked on the “Wandilla” in Brisbane. He had allocated 4/- of his daily allowance to his mother. The “Wandilla” arrived in Egypt on 7th March and Wil went into camp at Zeitoun on the Suez Canal.
 
After the evacuation of Gallipoli, most of the original battalions of the 1st and 2nd Divisions were split to form a sister battalion, thus doubling the size of the AIF. The 15th Battalion would provide a core of Gallipoli veterans to create the 47th Battalion, into which Wil was transferred on 20th April. There is much comment by modern day military historians that “Bull” Cannan took the opportunity to divest himself of officers and NCOs who could be described as “bits of duds” during this process. The new Commander of the 47th, Snowden, had a less than outstanding record from Gallipoli as far as leadership and discipline was concerned. Additionally, the 47th was one of the last battalions to be formed and numbers were made up from 1st and 2nd Division men discharged from the VD hospitals or released from military detention, and reinforcements from Australia. One former 47th soldier described the battalion as a “bunch of toffs, wasters and street loafers.”
 
When the rest of the AIF departed for the Western Front in March and April of 1916, the 47th remained in Egypt on garrison duty along the Suez Canal. While camped on the canal, the battalion managed to insult the Prince of Wales (Future King Edward VIII) by surrounding him and counting him out like a boxing referee.
 
The battalion finally left Egypt on the 3rd June. The officers discovered they could consume alcohol on credit whilst at sea and as one battalion member noted, for some of them it was a six-day binge. Several officers had to be carried from the ship when it docked in Marseilles. The battalion faced a sixty hour train journey to Outersteene near the Belgian Border. Once in their billets, pay was issued and large quantities of champagne at 5 francs a time were consumed by the ORs. No doubt young Wil would have been quite shocked at the behaviour of his fellows, coming as he did from a Methodist family which would have had strong views on the evils of drink.
 
Discipline would seem to be not the only area in which the battalion was lacking. Administration was also poor. The battalion’s war diary contains very scant information for most of the period of 1916 and 1917 with whole weeks and months unrecorded.
 
The 47th relieved other Australian battalions in the line for a few weeks. A sergeant from the 1st Battalion when being relieved noted of his relief “Captain McLaughlin ……. hopeless as ever; their Colonel seemed a particularly useless sort of beggar.” It would be fair to say that the 47th was ill prepared for the test that would soon come; the Somme.
 
The entire 4th Division, which included the 47th, arrived on the outskirts of Albert in early August. Wil had almost missed the move as he was in hospital with acute tonsillitis but was discharged a day before the move south. The objective for the 4th Division was to relieve the brigades of the 1st and 2nd divisions which had successfully taken the village of Pozieres and the trench lines on the ridge above. The 47th moved into the front line on the 5th August. The battalion history, “Battle Scarred” describes the situation: “There was no enemy to shoot at. No identifiable trench to give sanctuary, and no attack to mount. The 47th’s role would be to simply endure a German artillery bombardment that would become proverbial for its ferocity.” So appalling was the prospect of sending men into this hell that two of the four battalion commanders in the 12th Brigade disobeyed orders and only put half of their battalions into the front line; not so the commander of the 47th.
 
On the site of the Pozieres battlefield today is a commemorative stone which reads:
 
“The ruin of the Pozieres windmill which lies here was the centre of the struggle on this part of the Somme Battlefield in July and August 1916. It was captured by Australian troops who fell more thickly on this ridge than on any other battlefields of the war.”
 
Among those who fell was Pte Wilfred Bunnage, Killed in Action on 6th August 1916. He was almost certainly a casualty of the intense artillery bombardment. Wil was one of three young men from Gracemere who would be killed within three days at Pozieres. His military file has a note which reads “buried 500 yards NE of Pozieres”. This would place his burial close to the trench line the 47th were occupying. It is unlikely that any permanent marker survived the artillery barrage which rained down for the next week. The grave of Wil Bunnage was lost.
 
Wil’s parents received the news of his death a month later. Throughout 1917, Sarah Bunnage wrote repeatedly to the authorities in Melbourne enquiring into Wil’s personal effects. Eventually she was informed that no personal effects were found in his kit. William Bunnage took possession of his son’s medals in 1922, along with a memorial plaque and scroll.
At war’s end, the Australian Government pledged to erect a permanent memorial to those who had fallen in France but had no known grave. Due to a lack of funds and disputes over the design, the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux was not completed until 1938. It was dedicated by the newly crowned King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The memorial records the names of over 10,000 Australians who lost their lives in France during the Great War and who have no known grave; among them is Wilfred Bunnage.