Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

George LORENSEN #2206 52nd Battalion

George Lorensen had been born at Fernvale to parents Neils and Julie Lorensen. The family moved to Seib Street, Kilcoy sometime before George enlisted on 8th April 1916.

George informed the recruiters in Brisbane that he was 20 years old and stated his occupation as farmer. After spending some time in a depot battalion at Enoggera, George boarded the “Boorora” in Brisbane on 16th August 1916. The embarkation roll shows George as part of the 4th reinforcements for the 52nd Battalion.

The 52nd Battalion had been created in Egypt during the doubling of the size of the AIF in early 1916. The battalion was part of the 13th brigade of the 4th Division and had originally been made up of men from South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. The 52nd had suffered enormous casualties in its first major engagement at Mouquet Farm in July 1916 and from then on most of the battalion’s reinforcements came from Queensland.

George arrived in Plymouth in October 1916 and by December of that year he was finally posted to his battalion in France. As the spring of 1917 approached, the German forces on the Somme began a strategic withdrawal to previously prepared defensive positions on the Hindenburg Line. The British (which included the Australians) followed the withdrawal until they encountered the Hindenburg Line.

On 2nd April, George would have experienced his first action when the 52nd attempted a breach of the Hindenburg Line at Noreuil. The attack, as would a similar attempt ten days later at Bullecourt, would be spectacularly unsuccessful. Once the fact that sending waves of unprotected infantry against formidable defences was a fruitless waste, the decision was made to abandon the Somme and move the point of attack to Belgian Flanders and the Ypres salient.

In May 1917, the 52nd Battalion travelled by train north into Belgium and into camp where preparations were made for the opening gambit of the Flanders campaign. The 52nd battalion war diary records senior officers making reconnaissance sorties of the Messines Ridge. All ranks were shown a large scale model of the ground over which they would advance. The battle of Messines began with the blowing of 19 underground mines at 3:10am on 7th June 1917. The Australian 3rd Division under Major General John Monash advanced at first light and secured the planned objectives.

The 4th Division advanced from the jumping off tapes through the newly established lines of the 3rd Division later in the day. By that time the German defenders had recovered from the initial shock of their frontline having been blown up and artillery fire was rained down on the advancing Australians.

George Lorensen’s file contains the brief entry 7.6.17 KIA. There is a hand written note which states “buried” but as the battle for the heights of the Messines Ridge would rage for some days, any battlefield burial site would not have survived intact. When George’s father received notification of his son’s death he wrote to the authorities seeking information about the location of his George’s grave, and the likelihood of receiving any personal effects. Neils Lorensen also enlisted the help of the Kilcoy Patriotic Committee in securing copies of George’s death certificate so that his estate could be finalised.

Unfortunately for the Lorensen family at Kilcoy, no remains were ever located of their son, nor were any personal effects located or any indication provided of how George had died. It was as if George Lorensen had just disappeared into thin air.

George Lorensen is commemorated on the sandstone tablets which line the vault of the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres. His name is included along with 30,000 other British and Dominion troops who perished in Flanders and have no known grave. That sacrifice is remembered each evening at 8:00pm when the traffic through the Menin Gate is halted and a ceremony incorporating the laying of wreaths and the playing of the last post is conducted. The citizens of Ypres (now Iper) have maintained this tradition since the construction of the memorial in 1928, with only a brief pause from 1940-1945.