Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 7741 MEACHAM Reginald Edward             31st Battalion
 
Reg Meacham was born in Litchfield, Staffordshire to Frederick and Fanny Meacham on 12th May 1895. He attended the Boys National School in his home town and was then apprenticed to a local drapery firm for three and a half years.
 
The family emigrated to Queensland when Reg was 18 years old and his elder Brother Frederick was 20 to settle in the Queensland coastal town of Maryborough. Reg may have continued in the drapery trade for a while before taking up farming in the Nanango district.
 
Reg took the train from Nanango to Maryborough to attend the recruiting depot there on 10th August 1917. He informed the recruiters that he had attempted to enlist at an earlier time, perhaps at the same time as his elder brother Frederick, but was rejected due to poor eyesight. Reg stated his age as 22 years and named his father of Eva Street Maryborough as his next of kin. His attestation papers list his occupation as farmer and draper. A note in Reg’s file states that he passed the eyesight test wearing glasses.
 
Reg was provided with a travel warrant and took the mainline train to Brisbane where he presented himself at the Enoggera Camp. He was first placed in a depot battalion for preliminary training. On 30th August, Reg was granted six days home leave before returning to camp and being allocated to the 26th reinforcements of the 9th Battalion. The reinforcements travelled by train to Wallangarra where they changed to a NSW gauge train before continuing to Sydney. On 31st October 1917, Reg and the rest of the cohort of reinforcements boarded the “Euripides” and sailed for England.
 
The reinforcements disembarked at Devonport on 26th December and took a train to the 8th Training Battalion at Sutton Veny. Reg would discover his brother, Frederick, was in camp at Codford not far away. Frederick was at that time an NCO in the reinforcements of the 31st Battalion and it is possible that Reg applied for a transfer to his brother’s unit. On 2nd March 1918, reg was transferred to the 31st Battalion.
 
While the Meacham brothers were in camp in England, the war situation in France changed dramatically. Bolstered by almost 60 divisions of troops released from the Eastern Front, the German forces staged a rapid advance on the western front, and in particular against the British 5th Army that was holding the line along the Somme River valley. Within days of the launch of Operation Michael on 21st March, the gains made by the British and Australians on the Somme in 1916 were retaken, the 5th Army retreated in disarray, and the city of Amiens was threatened. If the city fell, the British would be cut off from their French allies and the Germans could march on Paris and win the war.
 
In a desperate move to protect Amiens, General Douglas Haig rushed four of the five AIF divisions that were in Belgium south to take up defensive positions astride the Somme. The German advance was finally halted at Villers Bretonneux, within German artillery range of Amiens, in late April.
 
When Reg was posted to France to join up with the 31st Battalion on 29th April, the Australian Major General John Monash had ordered his frontline troops to actively harass the enemy by active night patrols and trench raids; the so called “peaceful penetration,” in order to disrupt any further German incursions. Reg went into the defensive line with “D” Company at Corbie in the angle between the Somme and Ancre Rivers. In June 1918, the 31st battalion was relieved after spending 53 days continuously in the front line. The battalion went into rest billets near Amiens and even took part in an aquatic carnival at the Amiens baths. After a month’s rest, the 31st went back into the line providing working parties and continuing “peaceful penetration” when the opportunity arose.
 
Monash was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General in charge of the five divisions of the AIF in June 1918. He used his new found status to plan a small offensive operation against an enemy stronghold, the Wolfsburg, at Hamel which overlooked the lower ground in front of Villers Bretonneux. The attack, on 4thJuly, which had been meticulously planned was all over in 90 minutes and proved to be the blueprint for a much larger operation he was asked to contribute towards that would ultimately involve all five AIF divisions, three Canadian divisions and two British divisions. The battle which became known as the Battle of Amiens was timed to begin on 8th August.
 
In preparation for the Amiens offensive, the troops of the 5th Division AIF which included the 31st Battalion went into camp at Querrieu to practice coordination with the 24 Mark VI tanks that would accompany the division in its advance. Once the Wolfsburg had been eliminated, Monash could assemble his formidable force in the rear areas out of the enemy’s sight.
On 4th August, the 5th Division began to move up to be in position by the 6th August. The troops spent the next day and a half resting with no fatigue duties.
 
On the day of the battle the plan called for the 5th Division to assemble behind the 3rd Division which would advance during the first phase a distance of 3.5 kilometres under the protection of a creeping barrage supplied by 1000 guns. Once the 3rd dug in on this new line, the 5th would advance and leapfrog over the 3rd for another advance of 4.5 kilometres digging in just short of the village of Harbonnieres. When the opening barrage began at 3:10am on 8th August, the entire battlefield was swathed in heavy fog causing the junior officers in charge of platoons to adhere strictly to prismatic compass bearings.
 
The war diary of the 31st Battalion provides a detailed narrative of the action as the four companies advanced. There was very little opposition from the Germans and prisoners streamed in their hundreds through the Australian lines. Upon reaching the objective (the red line) the brigade command decided that they should advance a further one and a half kilometres to the other side of Harbonnieres and occupy some old French trenches from 1916. During this move, the battalion came across a 28 centimetre railway gun which they captured and chalked the Battalion credentials on the gun carriage. The barrel of the “Amiens” gun is now a prized exhibit at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
 
Monash’s plan also included extensive arrangements for the handling of casualties with Casualty Clearing Stations placed close to the front and ambulances queueing like cabs on a rank to carry away the wounded. For the 31st Battalion, casualties for the 8th August were remarkably light with only three men killed and 46 wounded. Unfortunately, Reginald Meacham was one of those killed. His body was removed from the battlefield and buried in a temporary cemetery near Harbonnieres. Reg had named his mother as the sole beneficiary of his will and she would also receive a funeral benefit from the Loyal Nanango Lodge of the Rechabites. At the conclusion of the war, small temporary gravesites were consolidated and Reg’s remains were exhumed and reinterred in the Heath Cemetery north of Harbonnieres. The Meacham family did not choose a personal inscription for Reg’s headstone.
 
Frederick Meacham ended the war as a second lieutenant. He returned to Australia in 1919 and went back to his profession as a journalist in Brisbane. Frederick married and moved to Ipswich where he worked as a journalist, editor and manager of the Queensland Times for over 20 years.