Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Duncan Ferguson was born to parents Hugh and Elizabeth Ferguson. Duncan’s father, when completing the Roll of Honour Circular, stated that Duncan had been born at Biggenden Mines. Duncan informed the recruiting officer he had been born in Maryborough. Duncan (it is possible that he was known by his middle name, Malcolm, as the Degilbo Shire War Memorial lists him as Ferguson M) attended school at Biggenden. It is likely that upon leaving school at age 14 or so, Duncan gained employment with Queensland Government Railways beginning as a lad porter.
 
By the time he enlisted in Brisbane on 15th September 1915, Duncan stated his occupation as locomotive fireman. He stated his address as Ferry Street Maryborough which was close to the Maryborough locomotive depot and Maryborough Station and named his father, Hugh Ferguson, Degilbo on the Gayndah Line as his next of Kin. Duncan presented as an ideal candidate for enlistment; he was single, 5’10’ tall and 21 years old.
 
Duncan was marched into camp at Enoggera the day he enlisted at Adelaide Street and was placed directly into a platoon of reinforcements for the 15th Battalion which was at that stage of the war manning the trenches at Anzac Cove. The reinforcements received training in drill, military discipline and musketry. Prior to embarkation for overseas, the men who comprised the 14th reinforcements for the 15th Battalion were granted a period of home leave. On 31st January, Duncan and the rest of the reinforcements boarded the Wandilla at Pinkenba Wharf and set sail for Egypt.
 
With the closure of the Gallipoli Campaign in December 1915, all the Australian troops were withdrawn to Egypt where they went into camps dotted along the Suez Canal. The AIF which at the time of the Gallipoli Campaign comprised two divisions was to be doubled. This was achieved by splitting existing Gallipoli battalions to form the core of two new battalions. Each new battalion was brought up to strength by the injection of reinforcements which had been building up in Egypt for months. When Duncan arrived at the Australian camp at Zeitoun he was immediately transferred from the 15th battalion to the 47th Battalion, which was part of the 12th brigade in the 4th Division AIF.
 
It has been suggested by many historians that when the splitting of the 15th Battalion occurred, the 15th’s Lieutenant Colonel took the opportunity to get rid of underperforming officers and NCOs by placing them in the new 47th Battalion. Final numbers to bring the 47th up to full strength were drawn from men who had been recently released from detention barracks. As most of the battalions of the four divisions began to leave Egypt for the Western Front in France, the 47th remained Serapeum as garrison troops. One observer noted that the 47th was comprised of “toffs, street wasters and loafers all mixed together.” The ill discipline for which the 47th became known was of course only evident in a small number of individuals, but the battalion’s reputation was none the less permanently stained.
 
To make matters worse, a Western Australian battalion in the same brigade as the 47th was accredited with being one of the best battalions in the AIF. Lt Colonel Ray Leane had served with distinction at Gallipoli. He had personally selected his senior officers and staff and many of them were relatives. It was joked that the 48th had so many Leanes in the ranks it should be called the Joan of Arc Battalion (Made of all Leanes /Maid of Orleans)
 
The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, inspected the 47th on the banks of the Suez Canal. Discipline was so bad that the men broke ranks and ran along behind the prince shouting and when His Royal Highness failed to acknowledge the reception proceeded to count him out like a boxing referee.
 
Excessive consumption of alcohol by officers and senior NCOs on the voyage across the Mediterranean in June 1916 resulted in several officers being carried off the ship in Marseilles. Company Sergeant Major Franz Koch was dismissed from the AIF due to drunkenness. When the battalion arrived in their billets in Northern France, the men received their first pay in some time which resulted in a number of cases of public drunkenness and breaches of military discipline. An observer from another battalion when seeing the behaviour of the 47th noted that “Captain McLaughlin was as hopeless as ever and their colonel (Lt Col Snowden) seemed to be a particularly useless sort of beggar.”
 
The four divisions of the AIF that were in France had a short period of acclimatization before being called into the Somme offensive which had begun on 1st July 1916, at the cost of 60,000 casualties on the first day. By the middle of July, the advance on the Somme had progressed only a short distance where it was held up by heavy defence along a ridge that ran from Pozieres on the Albert Bapaume Road northwest towards Thiepval. The 1st Division of the AIF was sent into the line on 15th July to take the village of Pozieres, at which they succeeded with relatively light casualties. On 29th July, the 2nd Division was put into the line to capture a number of trench lines on the crest of the ridge. The 2nd Division succeeded eventually but at great cost. In the first week in August, the 4th Division, in which Duncan was serving, were put in to the fight with the task of holding the positions gained by the 1st and 2nd Divisions in the face of German counterattacks. The battalion history of the 47th, “Battle Scarred”, states that the objective was to occupy the front line and endure an almost constant artillery barrage. Lt Col Leane of the 48th refused the order to put all his troops into the front line to be killed; he put two companies only into the front line but spread across the same front. Snowden of the 47th did not have the reputation that Leane had to defy his superiors and put all his four companies into the line, with a commensurate increase in casualties.
 
Duncan Ferguson’s file in the National Archives records that he was Killed in Action on 12th August 1916, almost certainly by artillery shell. There is a hand written note that records that he had been buried by his mates 500 yards northeast of Pozieres very close to the site of a ruined windmill. Today, a memorial stone occupies the site of the windmill. It carries the inscription:
 
 “The Pozieres windmill 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 battlefield of the war.”
 
The battles to capture Pozieres and nearby Mouquet Farm resulted in 23,000 Australian casualties.
 
Duncan’s father wrote several times to the authorities about the whereabouts of his son’s grave. In August of 1919, Hugh Ferguson wrote informing the authorities that he intended to go to France to visit his son’s grave. Unfortunately for the Ferguson family, the site of Duncan’s burial was ground that was fought over twice more during the course of the war and the simple wooden cross that may have been erected in 1916 by 1919 had disappeared.
 
Duncan Ferguson, along with over 10,000 other Australians who lost their lives in France and have no known grave, is commemorated on the tablets of the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux.