Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

#2605 LOUGHEED Edward Stanley                41st Battalion
 
Ed Lougheed was born at Nanango, one of five children to parents William and Catherine Lougheed. The family lived at Yarraman Creek and the boys probably worked on the farm. At one time, Ed took up a farming block at Cooyar west of Yarraman. Ed’s will named an elder brother, William who remained in the Yarraman Creek district, and a married sister, Edith Cagney, of Rockhampton. There is also a mention of a partnership with Mr Harold Beattie which may have been at Oorinda near Cloncurry.
 
Ed Lougheed presented himself for enlistment in Cloncurry on 8th August 1916. He gave his age as 29 years and stated his occupation as labourer. Cloncurry was at that time the centre of a profitable copper and gold mining industry and it is possible that Ed had been lured there with the prospect of good wages. After passing the medical, Ed began the slow journey by train from Cloncurry to Townsville from where he probably travelled by coastal steamer to Brisbane. There was no direct rail link between Brisbane and Townsville in 1916. Upon arrival At Enoggera Camp, Ed was initially placed into a depot battalion before being assigned as a reinforcement for the 25th Battalion. A last minute change saw Ed reassigned to the 5threinforcements of the 41st Battalion on 10th October.
 
Ed boarded the “Kyarra” in Brisbane on 17th November and sailed for England via Melbourne, Capetown and Sierra Leone; landing in Plymouth on 30th January 1917. Ed and the other reinforcements travelled to Larkhill in Wiltshire near Stonehenge where they were taken on by the 11th Training Battalion. It is likely that Ed met up with his brother Gibson at Larkhill who had enlisted three months earlier. The 41st Battalion, to which Ed and Gibson had been assigned, was part of the 11th Brigade of the 3rd Division AIF. The 3rdDivision had been in France since December 1916 under the command of Major General John Monash but for the first six months of 1917, the division was not involved in any major actions. This changed on the 7thJune when the Battle of Messines began in Belgian Flanders. This was the beginning of a series of battles which collectively became known as 3rd Ypres or more commonly, Passchendaele.
 
Ed was one of a number of reinforcements who were sent from the depot in England to Belgium to make good the losses incurred by the 41st Battalion at Messines during June and July 1917. Ed and his reinforcement draft were taken on strength by the 41st on 18th July. The battalion remained in the front line area rotating forward and then being relieved after a few days. In August, the 41st was withdrawn from the Messines front and went into billets at St Marie Capel in France close to the Belgian border for rest, reorganisation and training. In September, the battalion moved up to Assinghem and then to Poperinghe in Belgium in preparation for going back into action.
 
Once Messines had been secured, the British command embarked on a series of step by step advances beginning in Ypres. The first was the Battle of Menin Road in late September 1917, in which two AIF divisions were involved. The success at Menin Road was quickly followed up by an attack at Polygon Wood by the 4th and 5th Divisions of the AIF. By the first week in October, the British and Dominion forces had pushed eastwards from Ypres to the base of a low ridge, Broodseinde Ridge, on which the villages of Zonnebeke and Passchendaele (the ultimate goal of the campaign) were located.
 
On 4th October, the 41st Battalion moved into the jumping off tapes to await the opening artillery barrage which would creep forward with the advancing troops at Broodseinde. The 3rd Division was able to capture a number of enemy positions as battalions moved up and leapfrogged over each other to reach the designated line in front of Zonnebeke railway station. At this point of the battle, rain which had begun intermittently became unseasonally heavy and incessant turning the battlefield and the approaches to it into a sea of cloying mud which bogged men, equipment and animals. With Passchendaele in sight, the British Commander General Douglas Haig, who was totally oblivious to the situation on the ground, urged his corps commanders to press on. The exhausted infantry was not supported by the usual artillery barrage due to the fact that heavy guns were sinking in the mud, shells were not detonating on contact with the soft ground and mule trains became bogged getting ammunition to the gun lines. Haig’s insistence that the attack continue resulted in heavy casualties and the sobriquet “Butcher Haig.”
 
The failure of the British forces to take Passchendaele in November, and the coming of winter signalled the end of the Ypres Campaign. Even though Passchendaele was finally taken by the Canadians in late November, there was no hope of prosecuting any further advance. The exhausted Australians went into winter quarters in the rear areas around Poperinghe where warm dry billets were provided in Nissen huts. The men had access to divisional baths where uniforms could be cleaned and clean underwear issued. Each of the five divisions of the AIF had time at holiday camps on the French Coast before resuming work manning the front, salvage work and road mending. In March 1918, Ed was granted three week’s leave in England.
With the coming of spring and while Ed was enjoying the sights in England,
the German commander Ludendorff took advantage of a temporary numerical superiority of troops, caused by the collapse of the Russian Armies on the Eastern Front, to launch a surprise offensive against the British on the Somme. So successful was this offensive that in a few days the Germans had retaken all of the ground surrendered earlier in the war during 1916 and 1917; and were even threatening the vital communication hub of Amiens.
 
In response, Haig ordered the 3rd and 4th Australian Divisions to be rushed south. The first units to be mobilized were battalions of the 11th, 12th and 13th Brigades. The battalions boarded trains, London double decker buses and trucks for the journey south on 25th March. The 41st Battalion and the other three battalions of the 11th Brigade took up position between Amiens and the advancing German armies at Sailly le Sec, hard up against the north bank of the Somme. When Ed returned to his unit on 8th April, the 41st had been holding defensive positions which had been hastily dug.
 
Ed was not in the line long before he reported sick with a dose of syphilis, no doubt contracted while on leave. He was sent to the dermatological ward at Rouelles where he remained until discharged on 29th June. Ed returned to his battalion in time for the Battle of Hamel on 4th July, in which the 41st was in reserve.
 
Hamel was the first offensive operation undertaken by British forces since the ill fated Passchendaele campaign eight months earlier. It was a small action which had been planned by the Australian Corps Commander John Monash; incorporating coordinated use of artillery, tanks, aircraft and smoke screens. The plan called for the objective, the “Wolfsberg” redoubt overlooking the village of Hamel to be reached in 90 minutes. It in fact took 93.
 
Having proved the value of his methods and meticulous planning, Monash embarked on an even greater scheme which would involve all five divisions of the AIF, three Canadian Divisions, two British divisions and cavalry. The battle which became known as the Battle of Amiens commenced on the 8th August 1918. The plan was an almost carbon copy of the one used at Hamel the previous month. The 41st Battalion and the associated battalions of the 11th Brigade had the task of advancing from the start line near Villers Bretonneux to Lamont Warfusee. Amiens was a great triumph for Monash and his AIF, pushing forward an incredible 10 kilometres. It was the battle which broke open the static warfare of the trenches and put the campaign into open country.
 
Haig pressured Monash to use the AIF to keep the pressure on the shocked German army and smaller engagements continued to move the line eastwards; but not all of these actions enjoyed the success of Amiens. On 1st September, the 41st Battalion was attempting to move across a shallow valley near Roisel on the north bank of the Somme. There was savage hand to hand fighting as the Australians came within range of several machine guns located in a wood. The 41st war diary describes a “poor barrage” from the Australian gun lines in support of the infantry and “bitter hand to hand fighting”. The men of the 41st were forced to fall back taking the almost 100 wounded with them.
 
One of those wounded was Ed Lougheed. He sustained a serious wound to his lower jaw. Ed was transferred to the 61st Casualty Clearing Station and from there was taken by ambulance train to the 61stGeneral Hospital at Rouen where he died of his wounds on 8th September. He was buried in the St Sever Cemetery extension at Rouen aged 31 years. The Lougheed family did not complete any details on the Roll of Honour Circular, nor did they provide details to the War Graves Commission. Ed’s headstone simply records his name, battalion and date of death.