Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
# 6614 RITSON Francis Joseph    26th Infantry/ 1st Machine Gun Battalion
 
Frank Ritson probably never lived in the Biggenden area. His name on the Degilbo Shire memorial can be attributed to the fact that at the time of his service, his mother gave her address as Biggenden Post Office.
 
Frank was born in Charters Towers around 1894 and in all likelihood attended school there. As a young man, Frank served for 4 years in the Kennedy Regiment, a Militia unit which had its genesis during the Boer War. Although based in Charters Towers, the regiment had independent rifle companies in Townsville and Ravenswood and had the primary defence role in North Queensland. Frank may have had some training in the use of the Vickers Machine Gun during annual manoeuvres by the regiment on Palm Island.
 
When war was declared against Germany, the British Government requested the Australian Government to take steps to neutralise German threats in the Western Pacific, particularly wireless stations in New Guinea. As a result of this request, the Australian Government put together a combined force of militia and naval reserves, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force, to be deployed to New Guinea. As part of the AN&MEF, several companies of the Kennedy Regiment were also activated.
 
Frank Ritson was mobilised on the 8th August 1914 and along with other militia, boarded the “Kanowna” in Cairns and then joined the rest of the Expeditionary Force at Thursday Island on 16th August. In addition to the militia and naval reserves, the Expeditionary Force also was supported by two Royal Australian Navy Cruisers, HMAS Sydney and HMAS Melbourne, two submarines and a number of requisitioned transports.
 
Of primary concern was the wireless station at Rabaul on New Britain which could provide intelligence to the German East Asia Squadron under Admiral Graf von Spee. When the Australian Fleet set sail from Thursday Island, a situation developed on the “Kanowna” which could have been serious. The stokers and fireman refused to work until the ship returned to Australian waters. The haste with which the expedition had been assembled created a number of grey areas of responsibility and command. The militia men were technically under King’s orders and were subject to military discipline but the crew of the Kanowna were civilians and the conditions of their engagement were open to interpretation. It also was discovered that in the haste to depart from Cairns, insufficient stores of food and water had been loaded and the stokers working in the tropical heat demanded a better supply of water.
 
After almost a month of attempts to settle the dispute, it was decided to return the Kanowna to Townsville with soldiers stoking the boilers; docking on 18th September. None of the Kennedy Regiment men set foot on Papuan or new Guinean soil. Frank and the other militia were discharged and returned to their civilian occupations.
 
Frank Ritson’s second period of military service began on the 6th October 1916. The date is significant as the first of two plebiscites on the issue of conscription was about to be held and many eligible men enlisted prior to the vote so that they could be considered volunteers rather than conscripts. Frank presented himself to the recruiting depot at Charters Towers and stated his age as 22 years and occupation as railway shunter. He named his widowed mother Ellen, of Biggenden as his next of kin, and stated he had 4 years’ experience in the Citizen’s Forces.
 
From Charters Towers, Frank travelled by train to Townsville where he boarded a coastal steamer for a voyage south. (There was no rail link between North Queensland and Brisbane at the time). Upon arrival in Brisbane, Frank was placed in a depot battalion at Enoggera before being sent to the camp at Fort Lytton where he may have received some training in the use of the Vickers Machine Gun. He was finally allocated as a reinforcement for the 26th Infantry Battalion and took a train to Sydney to board the “Wiltshire” on 7thFebruary 1917 for overseas service. He allocated 3/- of his daily rate of pay to his mother.
 
Frank and the other reinforcements landed at Devonport Docks, Portsmouth, on 11th April and were marched in to the 7th Training Battalion at Rollestone on Salisbury Plain. After the heavy fighting the AIF had experienced in 1916 and early 1917, the Australians were taken out of the frontline for a prolonged period of training and rest. The 26th Battalion, to which Frank was nominally destined would not see any major action until September of 1917 and consequently there was no need for reinforcements.
 
On 20th July, Frank was transferred from the infantry to a Machine Gun Depot at Grantham where he probably continued in his training in the use of the Vickers heavy machine gun. The Vickers required a team of up to six men to transport, deploy, arm and fire. As well as the gun itself, there was a heavy tripod for mounting, a water tank and couplings to cool the barrel jacket, metal boxes of .303 ammunition, spare barrels and tools. In some cases, the team would pull a small limber which contained all of the above.
 
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 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.
 
As part of the deployment to the Somme, Frank and the other men who had been languishing in the barracks in England boarded a channel ferry at Folkstone, landing at Camiers on 9th April. On 20th April, Frank was marched in to the 1st Machine Gun Battalion at Hazebrouck. Five days after Frank arrived at his unit, the German advance along the Somme was halted by a daring pincer action by two Australian infantry brigades at Villers Bretonneux. For the next three months, the Australians astride the Somme and Ancre Rivers engaged in what the Corps Commander Monash called “peaceful penetration”, which actually meant full scale harassment of the enemy. The machine gunner’s role in this period was to provide “harassing fire”, that is firing into no mans land with no particular target.
 
Throughout May and June of 1918, the situation on the Western Front had stabilised with intelligence indicating that the German forces were suffering from low morale and shortage of essentials as the blockade of German shipping began to have an effect. On 4th July, Monash launched a small but well planned attack on the heights above the village of Hamel near Villers Bretonneux. He had planned that his Australian troops, supported by several companies of United States infantry and British tanks would reach the objective in 90 minutes. In fact, the blue line was reached in 93 minutes; Hamel was a resounding success. It was the first offensive action against the Germans in almost 10 months.
 
Buoyed by the success at Hamel, General Haig tasked Monash with planning a far grander offensive. The Battle of Amiens began on 8th August 1918 with four Australian divisions as the spearhead supported by three and a half Canadian divisions, tanks and armoured cars and aircraft dropping supplies to advancing troops. The advances made on the first day were staggering by the standards of Western Front. The German Commander Ludendorff called 8th August the “blackest day” for the German Army. In the subsequent days, the British Forces continued to press home the advantage as they advanced into the German rear.
On 12th August, it was reported that three men from a Vickers gun crew, Privates Gilbert, Chaffee and Ritson were wounded by a German artillery shell.
 
Frank Ritson was taken by stretcher bearers to the 55th Casualty Clearing Station with a severe shrapnel wound to his chest. Later that day, Frank died of his wounds and was buried in a temporary cemetery close to the CCS. The Matron of the 55th CCS wrote to Frank’s mother relating the circumstances of his death.
 
Soon after the death of Frank, Ellen Ritson left Biggenden for Townsville where she changed address several times over the next few years. When the Imperial War Graves Commission began to establish permanent cemeteries and headstones, Ellen Ritson could not be contacted. Frank’s headstone lists only his name, number and unit. There are no details regarding age or a personal inscription chosen by his family.