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Australia

"THE LATE LANCE-CORPORAL R. S. MOORE.

Lance-Corporal Roy Stanley Moore was killed in action on August 4. He was the son of the late Mr. George and Mrs. M. Moore, Meekatharra, Western Australia, and a grandson of Mrs. M. Harris Semaphore Road, Glanville. He was 24 years of age, was educated at Messrs. Caterer & Macklin's Semaphore College, and was employed as wharf clerk by Messrs. Walter & Morris for seven years. He served in Gallipoli. At the time of his death he was acting quartermaster sergeant. He played football for the Semaphore Central Club and cricket for the Ethelton B Club. His two brothers, Messrs. G. D. Moore and S. J. Moore, are in camp." - from the Adelaide Chronicle 28 Oct 1916 (nla.gov.au)

From Francois Somme

Lance Corporal 137 Roy Stanley Moore
27th Australian Infantry Battalion, A Company,
7th Brigade, 2nd Australian Division, AIF
 
On this summer day on the Somme, millions of poppies sway in the wind, soft and fragrant, painting the beauty of peaceful and marvelous landscapes whose silence is sometimes interrupted by the songs of birds and the laughter of innocent children, of a youth who, free, walk and play in peace on old battlefields which still bear the traces of the Great War and on which are still felt the souls of young men who, more than a hundred years ago, on these sacred grounds, fought, lived and fell during the darkest days of our history. They were Australian, French, British, German, all in the prime of their lives and in the trenches, in the mud and the barbed wire, gave their today alongside their friends, their brothers and fathers but, beyond their uniforms, their nationalities, they were above all men and that is what was the war, their war, a story of men who, driven forward by the hope of a great adventure, by words filled with glory, marched forward under hail of bullets in the midst of a hell on earth never seen before, in a nightmare made of fire, blood and steel and endured shoulder to shoulder, in brotherhood, the battles which here, in the Somme as at Pozieres, were among the most dreadful, the worst and the bloodiest of the whole war and which decimated, wave after wave, entire battalions but also the populations of villages overseas whose sons never returned and found after so much fury, pain and madness, the eternal silence of a white tomb on which can be read the lives and the history of these heroes to whom I feel deeply indebted and that is why I follow with my son, with my heart, the footsteps of these young men, whom I watch over them, not only to honor their memory but also to make their stories known and keep them alive so that they are never forgotten, so that the war and the horrors they went through never happen again.
Today, it is with infinite and deep gratitude and with the utmost respect that I would like to honor the memory of one of these young men, one of my boys of the Somme who, for Australia and France, for our children, gave his life. I would like to pay a very respectful tribute to Lance Corporal number 137 Roy Stanley Moore who fought courageously in the 27th Australian Infantry Battalion, "Unley's Own", A Company, 7th Brigade, 2nd Australian Division of the Australian Imperial Force, and who was killed in action 109 years ago, on August 4, 1916 at the age of 24 during the Battle of the Somme.

Roy Stanley Moore was born on 11 January 1892 in Exeter, South Australia, and was the son of George and Margaret "Maggie" Moore of Ajana, Western Australia. He was educated at Messrs. Caterer And Macklin's Semaphore College and after graduation worked as a wharf clerk by Messrs. Walter And Morris for seven years until the outbreak of the war. Roy was described as a very good sportsman who played football for the Semaphore Central Club and also as a cricketer for the Ethelton B Club.

At the start of the war, Australia was a nation of around four million people. This meant that there was a potential pool of around 820,000 men of "fighting age" (between 19 and 38).

Official recruitment for the Australian Expeditionary Force commenced in August 1914. With an initial commitment of 20,000 troops, the army was able to set a minimum height requirement of 5 feet 6 inches (168cm) and preference was given to those who had military experience.

By the end of the year over 50,000 had enlisted and thousands more had been rejected on medical grounds:
"One man was told that his eyesight was defective and was twice turned away before a £2 tip facilitated his passage into the Australian Infantry Force. Rejected men stumbled in tears from the tables, unable to answer sons or mates left to the fortunes of war. They formed an Association, and wore a large badge to cover their civilian shame. Those who sailed against Turkey were the fittest, strongest, and most ardent in the land". (Bill Gammage).

Many recruits worried that the fighting might be over before they arrived or that the German army would be a pushover. Posters and leaflets promised an opportunity to see England and Europe.

Troops were paid a minimum of six shillings a day (more than three times the wage of English forces) leading to the phrase "six bob a day tourists".
Although slightly below the basic wage, it was still attractive to many because of the tough financial conditions and high unemployment in 1914.

After the first casualty lists of Gallipoli were published, a sense of duty to country and fallen comrades were more often given by soldiers as their reason for enlisting. The war now seemed less like a great adventure and more of a moral decision:
"I will go, in my heart hating all the time the military spirit, rousing though it is from love of empire, and for the good of civilisation. I will train myself well in the use of military implements, and forms which are necessary for our purpose, without being carried away by the blind, ignorant, heroic spirit which inspires warlike men who fight for fighting's sake alone." (Private Percy Samson).

Probably driven forward by this hope of a great adventure and by a very strong spirit of solidarity and camaraderie, Roy answered the call of duty and enlisted on 5 February 1915 in Adelaide, South Australia, in the 27th Australian Infantry Battalion, A Company, nicknamed "Unley's Own" and then under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Walter Dollman (who had formerly served in the forerunner volunteer militia unit, the 74th Infantry). The 27th Battalion of the AIF was nicknamed "Unley's Own" as many of the men who first enlisted in the First World War were from the district. Lieutenant Colonel Dollman had served as Mayor of Unley, and it was down Unley Road that the troops marched to be greeted and celebrated at the Town Hall prior to their embarkation for Egypt, Gallipoli and then ultimately to the Western Front.

After a training period of just over three months at the newly established Mitcham Camp, south of Adelaide, during which Roy learned to fire and reload a rifle as well as the techniques of modern warfare such as bayonet charges and fighting, he embarked with his unit from Adelaide, on board HMAT A2 Geelong and proceeded to Gallipoli via Alexandria on 31 May 1915 and arrived on the Turkish peninsula on 4 September where the 27th Battalion remained until evacuation. In addition to enemy action, by this late stage of the campaign, poor hygiene and sanitation had begun to take its toll in the form of quite serious disease such as enteric fever (typhoid) and other maladies resulting in many evacuations, some right back to Australia.

Casualties included the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Dollman. As winter approached so plans for an evacuation were put in place and the ANZAC troops were withdrawn in perhaps the most successful phase of the entire campaign in the most difficult phase of war. Effecting a clean break without detection and exploitation by the Turks was achieved masterfully.

After Roy and the 27th Battalion evacuated from Gallipoli on the troop ship "Ivernia", they disembarked at Mudros, Greece, on January 6, 1916 and embarked on the "Minnewaska" before continuing their journey this time towards Egypt and arriving in Alexandria on January 10 where the re-consolidation and "Doubling of the AIF" took place. Under the shadows of the pyramids and the stone eye of the sphinxes, the men of the 27th underwent an intense period of training made particularly difficult by the heat and the lack of drinking water for the troops who had to march several kilometers without drinking and sometimes without eating, then, finally ready to join the battlefields of the Western Front, they embarked from Alexandria, on board the "Themistocles" on March 15 and proceeded to France.

On March 21, 1916, after a journey without notable incidents, Roy finally arrived in sight of the coasts of southern France and was disembarked at Marseilles and from there, later that day, moved by train to the small village of Morbecque, located in northern France where the battalion arrived on March 24. Here, the men received new equipment including gas masks which were immediately tested during exercises and during which the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Dollman was accidentally injured by chlorine gas and evacuated to hospital. Gas, at that time, was not a safe weapon but, little by little, its use was mastered and wreaked havoc on both sides of the front line, this was the case first at Ypres and then in the Somme where "mustard gas" caused thousands of victims.

On April 4, 1916, Roy and the men of the 27th left Morbecque and moved to Armenieres, via Outtersteene. Armentieres was known to the Australians as "the nursery" because it was in this quiet sector of the front that new recruits without combat experience were acclimatized to the conditions of trench warfare. Lieutenant Colonel Dollman, who had recently recovered from his gas drill injury, had returned and did everything possible to take care of his men but also to bring them to a high level of efficiency and professionalism. This included numerous periods of drill, including one at Armentieres involving bayonet fighting and musketry drills before taking up positions in trenches at La Chapelle d'Armentieres on April 7, from where they relieved a battalion of Tyneside Scottish and then, five days later, on April 12, were themselves relieved by the 25th Australian Infantry Battalion and moved into billets at the rear of La Chapelle d'Armentieres before returning to the trenches on April 17th and where for the first time, they suffered a heavy bombardment from the German artillery which fired about 200 shells on the positions held by the 27th but fortunately, caused no casualties. However, this was, for many men, the first shock with the brutality and reality of war but the enemy was not the only one who wanted to cause death and on April 24th, Private number 458, Edward Sullivan, of the 27th Battalion, was accidentally killed while cleaning his rifle. This was one of the first losses for the 27th on the Western Front and the worst was yet to come.
During May and June 1916, the 27th Battalion remained in the Armentieres sector, alternating periods in the trenches and at the rear on rest. In the absence of enemy activity, Roy was given leave and proceeded to England on June 14th. No doubt this rest away from the front line and the mud did him good, but unfortunately the war continued and he returned to his unit on June 22nd. Shortly after, on July 1st, the 27th Battalion moved to the Messines trenches, on the Ypres Salient and learned in the evening that on the same day, miles away, the British launched their "Big Push" on the Somme and became the deadliest day in the history of the British Army. Indeed, the Battle of the Somme had begun, unfortunately not with a victory, but with a massacre under a summer sky under fire from German machine guns.

Attempting to end the stalemate on the western front and to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, planned a massive breakthrough for July 1, 1916, near the river Somme, a previously quiet sector held by only about 120,000 German troops. Haig’s immediate aim was to capture Bapaume, seven miles distant. He preceded the infantry attack with a thundering seven-day, round-the-clock bombardment of 1.5 million shells, audible in London, that began on June 24. On July 1, at 7:26 in the morning, engineers detonated eight huge explosions in tunnels beneath the German trenches. Four minutes later, 100,000 British soldiers, each loaded with sixty pounds of kit, attacked across no-man’s-land along a fifteen-mile front. Because most were newly recruited volunteers with only rudimentary training and not yet trusted to fire and maneuver, Haig ordered them over the top at an unhurried gait in closely packed lines.

A creeping barrage preceding the advancing infantry was to cut the barbed wire fronting German trenches and kill whatever troops, presumably dazed by the long bombardment, managed to reach their firing steps. Assured by these preliminary measures, British soldiers moved out confidently, some kicking soccer balls before them. In fact, few Germans had fallen, as they had sheltered thirty feet below ground in bombproof dugouts. When British gun crews lifted their barrage prematurely for fear of hitting their own troops, German machine gunners scurried to the surface and poured devastating fire into the slow-moving British troops, who, because of severed communications, were unable to call down artillery support or to adjust their unrealistic timetable. So precise and menacing were German small-arms fire and gunnery that many soldiers were hit within their own lines; the few who reached German positions discovered to their horror that the wire was intact and were shot down as they desperately attempted to find a way through. Within an hour or less, the British army had suffered the largest single-day casualties in its history: at least 20,000 killed and 40,000 wounded. Although substantially outnumbered, the defending Germans lost 6,000 or fewer.

Despite the carnage of that first day, Haig stubbornly continued the offensive for more than five months.

Predictably, additional British and French attacks were unavailing. In September, even the first British tanks were unable to lead a breakout. Too few, too slow, and too mechanically unreliable, they delivered only a modest local advance. Haig ended the campaign on November 18, by which point the British had lost 419,654 men (73,412 of whom were either never identified or never found), the French 194,451, and the Germans more than 600,000, an immense human toll for a British advance of about seven miles.

On 11 July 1916, Roy and the men of the 27th Australian Infantry Battalion left the trenches at Messines and marched for Strazeele and from there, the next day, proceeded by train to the Somme where the British, suffering catastrophic losses, needed immediate reinforcements to continue their offensive on this front swept by shells and whose fields were nothing other than putrid quagmires on which blood flowed in torrents. On 12 July at 6pm, the 27th arrived at Saleux, near Amiens and on 14 July marched to Bertangles, reached Toutencourt on 21 July and moved into their new billets at Warloy-Baillon which they reached on 23 July, the date on which the appalling Battle of Pozieres, which became the deadliest engagement for the AIF troops on the Somme, began.

At Pozieres, on July 23, the men of the 1st Division were the first into the line and went forward after a ferocious preliminary bombardment. They made little headway attacking Pozières’ eastern sector but captured a tall concrete observation post called Gibraltar to the west. Enemy positions fell after close combat, usually following grenade attacks. The enemy counter-attacked in the morning and a fearsome artillery barrage churned the earth and buried men alive. Scores of stretcher-bearers died attempting to rescue the wounded lying in no-man’s land. The carnage continued for four days as Australian troops struggled to consolidate the ground they had won.

When the 1st Division was relieved four days later, on 27 July, it had suffered 5,285 casualties. The 2nd Division were now tasked with capturing the heights overlooking the village. A hasty night attack was launched and any ground gained was lost within two days for the cost of 3,500 casualties. Charles Bean’s diary entry for 29 July described it as "the first wholesale failure that Anzac troops have made." The diary entry of Corporal Ivor Williams, 21st Battalion, for 30 July 1916 vividly described what he saw:
"There is not one spot where one can find one square foot of earth not dug up by shells,not the slightest trace of a house or woods left. In most places even the bricks and tree stumps are missing, having been pounded to dust. The ground is just honeycombed with shell holes and the whole aspect and contour of the ground is changed,the battlefield is just covered with corpses, some terribly mangled and all in an advanced state of decomposition.There are pieces of bodies, armless, legless, and headless."

A second night assault was launched on 4 August. This time 2nd Division troops captured all objectives, including the infamous Windmill whose concrete foundations the Germans had transformed into a formidable fortress. The 2nd Division’s casualty toll from both attacks was 6,846. No Australian division, before or since, has suffered more losses in a single frontline tour. The men of the 4th Division relieved the 2nd Division on 6 August 1916. After withstanding a ferocious German counterattack the men turned north. A week passed as the 4th Division inched towards their new objective, Mouquet Farm, under the worst artillery bombardment ever endured by Australian soldiers. The battlefield became a featureless wasteland as landmarks were obliterated. Positions changed hands many times and soldiers struggled to determine where the frontline lay. Losses for the 4th Division climbed to 4,649 before it was withdrawn on 16 August.

By mid-August 1916 all three formations making up the 1st ANZAC Corps,the 1st, 2nd and 4th Divisions,had fought at Pozières. The troops expected to be spared further action. They were sorely disappointed. Each division was rested, reinforced to two-thirds strength, and thrown back into the fray. The 1st Division commenced its second tour on 16 August. After one week and 2,600 casualties, they were relieved by the 2nd Division who in five days of fighting, from 22 August, managed to capture the farm only to lose it again for losses of 1,300. The 4th Division returned to the battlefront on 27 August and suffered 2,400 casualties before being brought out of the line on 5 September.

The Australians welcomed the transferal of the Pozières battlefield to the Canadian Corps. Shattered weapons and equipment lay across a desolate wasteland of shell craters and ruined buildings. Rotting corpses and body parts littered the field. The acrid smell of explosives blended with the sickly sweet odour of death. Pozières was said to be a victory but it was certainly not a resounding one. In six weeks, in 19 separate actions, the 1st ANZAC Corps had suffered 23,000 casualties, including 6,750 dead, casualties comparable to the entire eight-month Gallipoli campaign. Deafening, bowel-churning artillery barrages at Pozières, coupled with the horrific sight of dismembered bodies, and the constant threat of being buried alive, or torn to pieces by shrapnel, led to the first significant spate of shell-shock cases among troops of the AIF. Bean would famously state that Pozières was "more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth."

On July 24, 1916, Roy and the 27th Battalion left Warloy-Baillon and marched to "Brickfields", near Albert where they bivouacked and then two days later, on July 26, for his courage, he was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal and on July 28, moved to the front line at Ovillers-La-Boisselle and occupied the trenches and dugouts of "Sausage Gully". On July 28, under infernal fire from the German artillery, the 27th Battalion joined its jumping off positions in anticipation of an attack planned for the same evening around 11:15 p.m. towards "OG1" and "OG2" two extremely well fortified and defended enemy positions located directly opposite the infamous "windmill".

Placed in reserve, the 27th played mainly a support role for the 5th and 6th Brigade who led the attack but it turned out to be a disastrous failure causing disastrous losses then on the night of 3rd to 4th August, this time, the 27th Battalion took part in a new attack to take the windmill which was a success, taking at the same time OG1 and OG2 but unfortunately, during this attack, Roy met his fate and was killed in action. This engagement at Pozieres was particularly deadly for the 27th Battalion who, during this night alone suffered 40 killed in action (including Roy), 289 wounded and 67 missing.

Immediately after his death and due to the violence and confusion of the attack in which he was killed, Roy's body was not found but in 1938 the remains of a young man were found and formally identified as Roy's by his identity disc and he was buried with full military honours at London Cemetery And Extension, Longueval, Somme, where he now rests in peace alongside his friends, comrades and brothers in arms.

Roy, on this day, it is with a heart filled with gratitude, respect but also deep admiration that I solemnly stand to honor your memory, to share and tell the story of a man who, so young, had the courage to take a step forward to defend freedom and who, with his head held high, in the name of peace, fought so bravely alongside his comrades, his brothers in arms during one of the most terrible battles of the Great War which saw so much blood flow through the barbed wire and along the trenches of the Somme which led to fury, madness and death an entire youth, so many men with lives full of hope who were broken under bullets and under a deluge of steel in a hell that they could not imagine and such as had never been seen before in the history of humanity but, in the Somme, the young Diggers, strong and as brave as Lions wrote the story of the ANZAC spirit behind which stood the entire Australian nation which, in 1915, at Gallipoli, on blood-red beaches saw so many of its sons fall who, so courageous, alongside their mates, gave everything they had but lost their innocence, their dreams and their hopes of a great adventure that had been so strongly promised to them and found, in the hills of Lone Pine, only death and the brutal reality of a war whose horrors would haunt all those who, for four long years, endured it with such determination under fire and hurricanes of steel which, in a funereal and morbid symphony, reduced to shreds the bodies and spirits of once smiling boys who were forever disfigured, mutilated and broken inside by an apocalypse which was nevertheless far from being at its paroxysm and yet already, on the beaches of this distant peninsula, was born the legend of courage that characterized the Diggers who, with faith and pride, with conviction, were in all the great battles of the war and endured the worst trials and who, despite what they experienced at Gallipoli. 

They always showed exceptional bravery and a spirit of camaraderie in which they found their strength and with which they were able to go, not without fear, over the top again and again at Fromelles where the AIF lived the worst 24 hours of its history then in the Somme, in the incandescent cauldron of Pozieres where days and nights, during seven weeks of abominable torment, they lived with death all around them which fell in iron hurricanes which, in terrible whistling, crushed, shredded all those who, powerless in the trenches, could not flee or hide from this apocalypse and were buried alive in a stinking and sticky mud in which were piled up, the arms, the legs, the bodies of men who had the bravery, the tenacity, the endurance to face such a massacre on this earth because the Somme was an open-air massacre in which friends and enemies killed each other during murderous assaults which ended in terrible hand-to-hand combat during which, eye to eye, so many killed themselves in howls of brutality and savagery which was engendered by the monstrosity of the war and those who sought to provoke it and then to feed this monster at an industrial pace with weapons serving only to cause more and more death on the battlefields reddened with the blood of thousands of men, brothers and fathers who loved, who were loved and only wanted to live in the love of their homes and to realize the dreams that animated them but whose existence was stopped among the poppies of the Somme on which still live the souls of these heroes who still walk silently and solemnly on what were once lines of trenches, execution fields that became fields of peace on which stand the graves of thousands of sons of Australia who also became the sons of France, a friendly country that they did not know well but for which they gave so much and paid the highest sacrifices. Young they were and young they will remain in our thoughts and in our hearts where we continue to cherish them and to remember them with the love that we owe them and with which I will always watch over them alongside my little boy to keep their memory alive and perpetuate their stories which deserve and must be told to future generations so that they can carry within them long after us this message written on the walls of Amiens and Villers-Bretonneux: "Never forget Australia."Thank you so much Roy, for everything you did for France whose love and gratitude will forever be yours. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember him, we will remember them.