Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 2278 YENSCH  Thomas William  25th Infantry Battalion
 
Thomas Yensch was the elder of two sons born to Martin and Margaret Yensch of Dallarnil. As was common practice at the time in that district, Margaret Yensch gave birth to Thomas in Bundaberg where midwifery resources were more readily available. Thomas and his younger brother Henry probably attended school at Dallarnil.
 
Thomas, accompanied by Henry, presented himself for enlistment in Brisbane on 16th March 1916. Thomas stated his age as 28 and George was 26. Both boys indicated that they were farmers and named their mother as next of kin. The boys were placed in a depot battalion for initial training at Enoggera. It was common practice to place brothers in the same unit but in the case of Thomas and Henry they were allocated to different battalions in different divisions. Thomas was initially listed as a reinforcement for the 15th battalion but on 9th May, he was reallocated as a reinforcement for the 49th Battalion. Henry was allocated to the 41st Battalion and it is doubtful if the brothers ever saw each other again after they departed for overseas.
 
Thomas along with the rest of the 4th reinforcements for the 49th Battalion boarded the “Boorara” in Brisbane on 16th August 1916 and landed at Plymouth on 13th October. The reinforcements marched out to the 13thTraining Battalion at Codford where training continued. At the end of January 1917, once the worst of the winter was passed, Thomas was transferred to the huge British Transit and Training Camp at Etaples on the French Coast where he was placed in a segregation camp, perhaps due to an outbreak of an infectious disease such as mumps. Thomas was discharged from the segregation camp into the general population at Etaples on 17th February 1917 where he was reassigned as a reinforcement for the 25th Battalion. He was taken on strength by the 25th on 28th February.
The 25th Battalion has suffered enormous casualties at Pozieres, Mouquet Farm and Flers in the last half of 1916 and were in a rebuilding and retraining phase when Thomas marched in to the battalion lines. The coming of spring in 1917 revealed an unusual sight to the troops manning the front lines on the Somme; the enemy had abandoned their positions and withdrawn to the east. In an effort to shorten the defensive line across the Somme valley, the Germans had secretly constructed a heavily defended line on higher ground that stretched for some 150 kilometres. The Germans called this defence the Seigfreid Position but the British named it the Hindenburg Line. As the German army withdrew to this new position, the British forces under General Gough cautiously followed.
 
On the 11th April, a force of several divisions which included two Australian divisions attempted to breach the Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt. The attack was a disaster with one commentator noting that it had as much a chance of success as an attempt to capture the moon. Undeterred by the setback, Gough planned for a second assault on 3rd May and for this attempt the 25th battalion, as part of the 2nd Division of the AIF was called up to the line. In spite of putting 14 divisions (almost 250,000 men) into the assault along a 16 kilometre front, the attack was again repulsed. During the headlong charge towards the enemy line and subsequent retreat, Thomas received severe shrapnel wounds to both legs.
 
He was taken to a Casualty Clearing Station and from there loaded onto an ambulance train for a journey to Rouen where he was stretchered onto a hospital ship. Thomas arrived at the 2nd South London General Hospital on 14th May where his wounds were operated on. He was transferred to the 3rd Auxiliary Hospital to recover and when he was ambulant once more, was granted a two week furlough.
 
Thomas continued to convalesce at the Weymouth Depot and then moved on to the training battalion at Hurdcott. During this time, Thomas must have written to his mother expressing his hope to be “home soon”. Margaret, who had by that time remarried after Martin’s death, took this wish as a clear indication that her son was coming home and wrote to the authorities asking for details as she was concerned that he would walk down the gangplank and no one would be there to meet him. Base Records in Melbourne advised that they had received no such advice but it is clear from Margaret’s letter and others that she wrote that she was anxious about her sons. In another letter, Margaret expressed concern that Thomas had written that he was suffering from a bad cold.
 
The simple truth of the matter was that unless a soldier was classed as no longer fit for duty of any kind due to permanent disability, then the injured soldier would be returned to duty. So it was that Thomas returned to his battalion in the front lines at Broodseinde Ridge near the village of Passchendaele on 14th October 1917.
 
Throughout the period from June to November 1917, the thrust of the British offensive had shifted to the Ypres salient in Belgian Flanders. The campaign under General Plumer showed great promise during the summer months but by the middle of October, unseasonal autumn rains turned the battlefield into a sea of stinking, clogging mud which trapped men, animals and equipment. In spite of the inability to fight both the enemy and the weather, army commanders were under orders to push on towards a ridge on which sat the small village of Passchendaele. Three weeks after Thomas had rejoined his battalion, the 25th found itself engaged in a series of fruitless attacks towards Passchendaele. The Germans were using poison gas in their artillery barrages and Thomas was taken to the rear suffering the effects of gas.
 
The main gas employed was mustard gas which was rarely fatal but which caused severe blistering of the skin and airways as well temporary blindness. Thomas was evacuated to the 22nd General Hospital at Camiers before taking the familiar crossing of the English Channel to the 3rd General Hospital at Newport in Wales. One month later, Thomas was transferred to the 1st Australian Hospital at Harefield outside London and was granted a two week furlough in late December. In January he was posted to the AIF depot at Sutton Veney and on the 1st February 1918, Thomas recrossed the channel to France. He was taken on strength by the 25th on 7th February.
 
During the winter of 1917/18, the five divisions of the AIF were billeted in the border region of France and Belgium. The collapse of the Russian Forces on the Eastern Front in late 1917 allowed the German Field Commander Ludendorff to shift up to 50 divisions to the Western Front for a series of assaults against the British armies, which was expected in the Spring of 1918. Operation Michael began on 21st March with a rapid advance west from the Hindenburg Line defences towards the British 5th Army on the Somme. The British could not hold the German advance and the 5th Army was close to collapse. Having been caught out by the speed of the German onslaught, General Douglas Haig ordered the brigades of the AIF to travel independently to take up defensive positions on a line in front of the city of Amiens.
 
The 7th Brigade, which included Thomas and the 25th Battalion, shifted from Belgium south to Daours on 12th April where they assisted in holding the line north of the Somme. It was reported that on 15th April, while engaged in strengthening outpost positions, Thomas received a burst of machine gun fire to his back and abdomen. He was taken to the 6th Field Ambulance where he died of his wounds the following day. Thomas was buried in the Henencourt British Cemetery.
 
Upon being advised of her son’s death, Margaret Elliott wrote to the authorities pleading for the return of Thomas’ personal effects. Eventually a wallet and a pocketbook were recovered from the AIF kit store at Horseferry Road in London. The items were packaged up and included in a large consignment of personal effects which was part of the manifest of the “Barunga,” a ship of the Hamburg Line formerly registered as the “Sumatra” which had been captured in Sydney at the outbreak of war. The ”Barunga” was torpedoed by a German submarine just off the Scilly Isles on 15th July 1918. All 800 wounded and sick servicemen who were being repatriated back to Australia as well as the ship’s crew were rescued but the cargo went to the bottom with the ship.
 
In 1923, Thomas’ remains were exhumed and reinterred in the Ribemont Communal Cemetery Extension. Margaret chose the following inscription for her son’s headstone:
 
ONE OF THE BEST
A LOVING SON
A BROTHER BRAVE AND TRUE