Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Gunner Allen James Seage was killed instantly on the No2 gun alongside Arthur Leslie.

Arthur Leslie was born at 'Alford Villa', Bowen Terrace, Brisbane, on 3 January 1881, the second son of Alexander Smith Leslie (a Scottish merchant) and Martha Elizabeth Aland. He was an old boy of the Brisbane Grammar School to which he had won a scholarship. He was also a member of the BGS cadets. At some point in his comparatively short life he acquired the nickname 'Dude' though the photo we have of him in his AIF uniform hardly suggests a sartorial bent!

I don't know whether Arthur completed Senior but after leaving school he was for some time employed as a warehouseman by Messrs. Thomas Brown and Sons of Brisbane during which time, incidentally, he contracted "a mild attack" of Bubonic plague and was quarantined in Colmslie Hospital. [See: The Brisbane Courier, Thursday 17 May 1900, page 6]. By 1913 he had answered the call of the bush venturing to Mitchell Downs sheep station in Western Queensland where he was employed as bookkeeper.

According to family legend, Arthur had volunteered for service in the Boer War but was pulled from the ranks by his father on account of his youth. His father's action was said to have caused an estrangement. In any case, if it was adventure he sought, he was not to be cheated when his opportunity came some fourteen years later with the outbreak of World War I. Among the first to volunteer, Arthur enlisted as an artilleryman on 10 September 1914 at the age of 33 and a fortnight later on 24 September 1914 had embarked for Egypt with the first expeditionary force on board HMT 'Rangatira'. His younger brother, Captain Walter Aland Leslie, sailed with him.

No. 2320 Gnr Arthur Leslie was initially posted to the 3rd F.A.B. Ammunition Column though he later served with the Brigade's 7th Battery of which his brother Walter commanded a gun until his death in May 1915. At some point (which is not entirely clear from his service record) Arthur was transferred from the 3rd F.A.B. to the 4th Battery of the 2nd F.A.B. as a Driver and it was with this unit that he embarked on 8 April 1915 for Gallipoli. Thwarted yet again, he was to remain on board ship with the horses, a spectator to the action on the Peninsula though the ships themselves were subject to periodic shelling from the Turkish guns on the heights. Finally, since the horses were not required on shore and had been held on board unexercised for about a month, orders came for their return to Alexandria.

On 18 May 1915 from the camp at Zaharich, Arthur wrote quite a lengthy letter to his mother describing the scenes he'd been eyewitness to in the Dardanelles and condoling her for the loss of Walter on May 6. It contains an optimistic panorama which reveals an absolute faith in victory over the Turks despite the sadness of personal loss and the lack of decisive progress. Clearly, by mid May 1915 the stalemate that Gallipoli was to become had yet to impose itself on British morale.

On 15 November 1915 Arthur again embarked for Gallipoli this time on the troopship 'Themistocles'. He reached the Peninsula on 21 November where he was taken on the strength of the 4th Battery. Almost three weeks later on 11 December 1915 while still on Gallipoli he was transferred back to the 3rd Brigade's 7th Battery, thence by 28 December back to Alexandria. We have no letters or diary entries for this period of his service so his thoughts on the 'retreat' can only be surmised.

For whatever reason, Arthur seems to have been moved about quite regularly at the outset of his service and on 27 February 1916 at Tel-el-Kebir was again transferred, this time to the 4th Artillery Division. At Tel-el-Kebir on 6 March 1916 he was transferred to the 21st Howitzer Brigade and posted to the 103rd Howitzer Battery with which he embarked for France disembarking at Marseilles on 1 April 1916 (April Fools' Day!). On 15 May 1916 he was transferred back to the 7th Battery, 3rd F.A.B. On 23 September 1918 he was promoted to T/Sergeant and was on the strength of the 103rd Howitzer Battery (attached then, it seems, to the 3rd F.A.B.) at the time of his death in action one week later on Monday 30 September 1918. He died shortly after he was hit while in charge of No.2 gun. A rather moving letter home was written by Arthur's good friend and comrade Corporal Harry Antcliff. The following is an extract:

'We had been advancing continuously, pushing back the enemy, from the morning of the 8th Aug when the advance first started. The 30th Sept was the date on which the Australians and the Americans broke through the Hindenburg Line. We were not far from a village called Epehy. The battery commenced firing soon after daylight and almost immediately the enemy retaliated. Arthur was in charge of No. 2 gun and a few minutes after they commenced a shell burst just in rear of the gun killing one chap and wounding Arthur and two other fellows. They were very quickly carried into a dugout and everything possible was done but unfortunately without avail. Arthur was quite conscious but he only lived about five or ten minutes after it happened. I asked the officers if it was possible to get the chaplain of the 6th Brigade Major Edwards who is a member of the Charleville Bush Brotherhood whom Arthur knew personally, but unfortunately it was not possible to get him. Mr Farrow an officer of the 7th battery read the service. Arthur is buried in a small military cemetery near the village of St Emilie near a town called Roisel.'

With the exception of two short furloughs in Britain during which he had visited his father's native Aberdeenshire, Arthur had served continuously with his unit in Flanders and in France. The Monday upon which he died was the day the Australians and Americans broke through the Hindenburg Line. He was due to return to Australia on Anzac leave prior to his death though it is said that he rejected his initial opportunity to do so. The cause of his reluctance is a mystery but perhaps he couldn't face the emptiness of homecoming after the loss of his brothers or maybe he simply didn't want to leave his comrades. After all, the Battery had been his home for four years and any sense of loss was surely diminished by the frenetic activity of war.

Though on the whole a somewhat laconic observer, Arthur recorded his experiences in a 1916 and 1917 diary where there are some lively observations dotted amidst the tedium of routine chores and weather checks. He was 33 years and 9 months' old when he enlisted on 10 September 1914 and 38 at the time of his death on 30 September 1918. It wasn't only a young man's war.

Arthur was buried in the Ste. Emilie Valley Cemetery, Villers-Faucon, where in 1926 he was visited by his mother and younger sister Margaret. Being single and having no issue, he left what I imagine would have been a small estate to his mother.