Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 21381 McGREGOR  Gregor                         7th Field Artillery
 
Gregor McGregor was born in Brisbane. His parents lived at Lytton Road, East Brisbane and Gregor probably attended the nearby East Brisbane State School, where he was a member of the school cadets.
 
Gregor presented himself to the Brisbane recruiting office in Adelaide Street on 23rd September 1915. At the time, Gregor was working in the Nanango district as a stockman. He informed the recruiters that he was 20 years old and being under the age at which he could freely enlist, had obtained his parents written permission. Gregor stated his address as “The Grange”, Nanango and named his father, John, of Lytton Road as his next of kin.
 
Gregor was despatched to Enoggera where he was immediately taken on by an artillery unit and given the rank of provisional corporal. None of the artillery units raised at Enoggera had the necessary 18 pounder field guns and so the time was spent qualifying on the rifle range as well as drill and route marches. Eventually, Gregor and a small contingent of gunners and drivers travelled to Marrickville outside Sydney where they would begin training with the 18 pounders and the accompanying horse team, limber and ammunition wagon.
 
On 11th May 1916, Gregor, as part of the 9th Field Artillery Brigade Ammunition Column, boarded the “Argyllshire” in Sydney, arriving at Devonport in Devon on 10th July. The voyage was via South Africa and Sierra Leone in order to avoid the presence of enemy submarine activity in the Mediterranean and English Channel approaches. Once ashore, the gunners were put onto trains for the journey to Larkhill on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.
 
At Larkhill, a new division of the AIF, the 3rd Division, was being assembled under the command of Major General John Monash. The division would spend most of 1916 training in preparation for being sent to the western front at the end of the year. The 3rd Division was the only Australian unit in England at the time and Monash and his men who had been directly recruited from Australia caused a deal of interest among the British, and even the Royal family. In August 1916, King George V travelled on the Royal Train down to Wiltshire to inspect the volunteer army which had come to help Britain in its fight. The visit was a great success and the King and Monash sat chatting side by side on their horses as almost 20,000 men of the 3rdDivision marched or paraded past. On 10th November, Gregor’s appointment as corporal was made permanent. In December the entire 3rd Division began its deployment to the continent sailing from Southampton to Havre. The gunners of the 9th FAB departed on 31st December and went into camp at Havre while sorting out their guns and equipment. On 6th January, Gregor was transferred to a howitzer battery, the 107th, in the 7th Field Artillery and the 9th FAB was disbanded.
 
The newly organised Field Artillery Brigades comprised of three or four batteries of 18 pounders and one battery of howitzers. Each battery consisted of between four and six guns.
The 18 pounders were pulled by a team of six light draft horses, harnessed in pairs with a rider on the left horse of each pair. The gun itself was hitched to a limber between gun and horse team which contained a limited number of shells. The members of the gun crew travelled in a wagon which also carried the crew’s baggage and spare parts. Howitzer teams were arranged in a similar fashion but usually were pulled by mule teams due to the increased weight of the gun. As captain of the gun crew, Gregor was mounted on his own horse.
 
The artillery brigades, though notionally attached to an AIF division were often deployed supporting British, French or Canadian troops. From the time of their arrival on the Western Front, the 7th FAB was employed almost constantly in support of trench raids and general harassing fire around Ploegsteert (The gunners called it Plugstreet). On 7th June 1917, the Battle of Messines began with the firing of 19 underground mines beneath Messines Ridge. During the battle which raged for almost six weeks, the British, Australian and Canadian artillery fired almost three and a half million shells.
 
The 4.5” howitzers were used to target important positions in the rear of the German positions while the 18 pounders, with their lower trajectory, provided the cover for advancing infantry in the form of a creeping barrage. On 24th June, Gregor’s gun was targeted by counter battery fire with gas (probably mustard gas). He was evacuated to the 2nd Casualty Clearing Station and then transported to Boulogne where he was placed in a military hospital, before being evacuated to England on a hospital ship. Gregor was admitted to the 1st Canadian Ontario Military Hospital at Orpington on 9th August.
 
Gas had become a common weapon in 1917. It did cause some fatalities but its main effect as a weapon was that a large amount of scarce medical and logistical resources were required to provide the treatment necessary to casualties who may have been temporarily blinded or had difficulty breathing. Recovery was slow and many of those affected may have been permanently unfit for active duty. In Gregor’s case, once stabilised at the Canadian Hospital, he was transferred to the large Australian hospital at Harefield to recuperate and convalesce.  On 29th September, Gregor was discharged from Harefield and marched in to the 3rd Division Training brigade at Larkhill. Gregor crossed over to France on 15th November 1917 and rejoined his Artillery Brigade in Belgium eight days later. He had been out of action for five months.
 
By December 1917, the main theatre of operations for the British forces in Belgium was closed down for the winter. After the gruelling Flanders campaign which ended in the mud at Passchendaele, the Australian divisions went into camps to rest, take on reinforcements and replace or repair equipment. For the gunners, many of their guns needed to have new barrels and recuperating springs fitted. Limbers which had been abandoned on the muddy tracks during October and November had to be replaced. When not working at these tasks, the men took part in sports competitions and frequent visits to the divisional baths to have uniforms cleaned and receive clean underwear.
 
The later part of 1917 produced a change in the strategic situation as far as the German command was concerned. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia brought about the end to fighting on the Eastern Front. A peace treaty between Germany and Russia released up to sixty German divisions which, once re-equipped and re-trained, could be used to press home a distinct advantage on the Western Front. The window for exploiting this advantage was however rather small as the entry of the United States into the war and an expected surge in troop numbers from July 1918 onwards would swing the advantage back to the Entente. The German commander, Ludendorff had only a short time to press home his advantage.
 
The British Commander, General Haig, was fully expecting a German assault in the spring of 1918 but he guessed incorrectly that the main thrust would be aimed at the Ypres salient in Belgium. To meet that threat, Haig positioned the five AIF Divisions there. When Operation Michael began on 21st March, the main assault was aimed not in Belgium but along the line of the Somme River in France, the scene of so much fighting and hard won victories in 1916.
The British 5th Army, which was holding the line astride the Somme was unable to hold the German onslaught. As the British retreated, often in disarray, the German stormtroopers retook all of the gains made by the British in the Somme campaign and were within a few days of capturing the vital communication city of Amiens. If Amiens fell, Haig might well have lost the war; the situation was deadly serious.
 
Haig ordered his most successful and battle hardened troops, four of the five divisions of the AIF in Belgium to race south to establish a defensive line in front of Amiens. By the 1st April 1918, the batteries of the 7thFAB were in the gun lines between Amiens and Albert. The war diary of the 7th Field Artillery is very detailed regarding the times of barrages and the number of shells of each type fired. Daily records are reported for each day of the months of April, May and June as the brigade shifted with the defence from Heilly to Monument Wood and then Vaire.
 
On 22nd June, Gregor is reported to have been killed. There is no mention of what happened in the war diary, save for the month’s casualty report, which lists three men killed and nine wounded for the month of June. Gregor was most likely the victim of counter battery fire by the German artillery. He was buried in a corner of a civilian cemetery at Blangy Tronville. It is a very small military cemetery with forty three burials, more than half of whom were gunners killed in 1918.
 
When permanent headstones were being erected by the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission, Gregor’s father chose the following inscription:
LOOK TO THE MORROWS RISING SUN
AND SAY THESE WORDS THY WILL BE DONE