Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
#3402  MARSHALL Archibald James  41st Infantry Battalion
 
Archie Marshall, who was sometimes known as James or Jim, was born at Bollon on the South Western Railway Line between At George and Cunnamulla around 1893. Documents contained in his file in the National Archives indicate that one of his parents was indigenous which meant that Archie was classified as “half caste.” The introduction of the Protection of Aborigines Act by the Queensland Government in 1897 meant that Archie was classed as a ward of the state, under the control of the Office of the Chief Protector of Aborigines. Under this legislation, indigenous people required permission to work, change address and marry. Any wages they earned were below the rate for non indigenous workers and money was held in trust by the Protector. It was common policy to remove “half caste” children from their families, perhaps out of embarrassment.
 
Archie was probably forcibly removed from the Bollon area to the Barambah Settlement in the South Burnett while he was young. The Barambah Settlement (renamed Cherbourg in the 1930s) outside the town of Murgon had been established in 1901 on land acquired from the huge Barambah cattle station. Wards of the state were only educated to Grade 4 standard, after which they were put out to contract work. It is probably in this period that Archie acquired skills in handling cattle.
 
The Defence Act of 1903 specifically excluded indigenous men from military service in the Commonwealth Forces; in spite of the fact that a small number had already served in the Boer War. It can only be guessed as to the reasoning for this exclusion but the effect was that at the outbreak of the First World War, indigenous men were refused acceptance into the AIF. Regardless of the provisions of the act, a number of men were accepted; either by deliberately disguising their ancestry (some claimed to be Maori, or Filipino), or because recruiters had a different view to the politicians. By the latter half of 1916, the Australian Government was faced with shortage of enlistments to maintain the five divisions on the Western Front. After the defeat of the first conscription plebiscite in October 1916, The situation regarding recruitment was even more acute. The regulations (but not the Act itself) were amended in May 1917 to relax restrictions regarding height, chest measurement or age; and importantly to permit the enlistment of men who had one parent of European (white) origin. This change led to a surge in enlistments in Queensland in particular.
 
It is likely that by 1916/17, Archie Marshall, going by the name of Jim as the Degilbo Roll of Honour lists him as J. Marshall, was working as a stockman in the North Burnett district. He travelled by train down to Maryborough where a local JP completed his attestation papers on 5th June 1917. Archie stated his age as 24 years and occupation as stockman. He initially was unable to name a next of kin, perhaps because he had been removed from his family at a young age. He did eventually name Joe Murray of Barambah Settlement as his half brother and next of kin.
 
Archie’s file indicates that he was originally allocated to the Light Horse, a not unusual placement as many of the reinforcements for the 11th Light Horse were indigenous stockman. Almost as soon as he arrived at the Rifle Range Camp at Enoggera, he was granted two days of home leave during which he presumably caught the train to Murgon via Gympie. It is possible that one or more of the photographs of Archie in uniform were taken at that time. On arrival back at camp, Archie was allocated to an infantry battalion, the 41st. He would have been quickly fitted with a uniform and undergone a thorough medical exam. Almost immediately, Archie and the rest of the 8th reinforcements for the 41st Battalion boarded a train to Wallangarra where they changed trains for the journey on to Sydney. It is unlikely that Archie had any meaningful training at all before embarkation. Prior to embarkation, Archie made out a will bequeathing all of his estate to Joe Murray.
 
Archie boarded the “Hororata” in Sydney on 14th June; a scant nine days since enlisting. He had allocated 2/- of his 5/- a day pay to Joe Murray. If Joe was indigenous, then this allotment would have been placed in trust and it is possible that none of this money or any deferred pay and war gratuity ever reached Joe Murray.
 
The Hororata sailed via South Africa and Sierra Leone, arriving in Liverpool on 26th August 1917. The reinforcements were shipped by train to the 11th Training Battalion at Durrington for further training. Having spent two months on a cramped troopship, the last thing that Archie would have wanted was to be contained in a bleak camp on Salisbury Plain. On 10th September, he was charged with being Absent Without Leave for three days and was given three days of field punishment. On 8th January 1918, Archie commenced a journey from Southampton via Havre to join up with the 41st Battalion in the field at Bailleul on the border between France and Belgium. Three days after marching in to camp, Archie was found in the town without a pass.
 
Throughout the winter of 1917/18, the general consensus of the British Commanders was that a large German attack would occur in the spring of 1918 and would be directed at the Ypres salient. In anticipation of an assault in Belgium, The British Commander, Douglas Haig, positioned his best fighting force, the AIF, in a position to meet the threat. This was where the 41st Battalion was positioned when Archie joined their ranks.
 
The German assault, codenamed Operation Michael, began on the 21st March; aimed not the Belgian front but along the valley of the Somme River which was the arbitrary demarcation between the British and French Armies. The German storm troops rushed headlong at the weak British 5th Army which broke in the face of the advance. There was a real possibility that if the German advance could capture the important communication hub of Amiens, the British and French forces would be split and the Germans could wheel south to envelop Paris and win the war.
 
Faced with collapse of the 5th Army, Haig ordered that brigades of the 3rd and 4th Australian Divisions be rushed south to establish a line to defend Amiens. The 11th Brigade, which included the 41st Battalion, under the command of Queenslander General Cannan, began a rushed journey south from Steenvordt to take up position in the triangle formed by the confluence of the Somme and Ancre Rivers. The Brigade war diary records that during the journey south, the battalions encountered French refugees fleeing in the face of the “Bosche”, as well as British soldiers who had broken and fled also.
 
When the 42nd Battalion and the other three battalions of the brigade arrived at their defensive positions between Heilly and Sailly-le-Sec on 24th March, less than 20 kilometres from Amiens, the situation was desperate. There were no trenches save for some overgrown and collapsed fortifications left over from the French.
 
With the arrival of the Australians into the Defence of Amiens, the Germans concentrated their efforts on the south bank of the Somme with the intention of taking the heights above the village of Villers Bretonneux, which was in artillery range of Amiens. Throughout April, elements of the 3rd and 4th Divisions held defensive positions astride the Somme. On 9th April, General Douglas Haig issued his famous “backs to the wall” speech in which he emphasised the serious of the situation and the importance of holding the position at all cost.
 
The war diary of the 41st Battalion records a daily routine of men standing to during the day but at night active patrolling in no mans land with the objective of capturing an enemy soldier (this was the main form of intelligence gathering). On 21st April, the diary records the appearance of several red Fokker Triplanes from Richthofen’s flying circus. The men in the trenches were in an excellent position to observe the Baron Manfred von Richthofen’s plane being engaged by a couple of British fighters when the Red Baron received a fatal shot from an Australian machine gunner. The plane crashed near the 11th Brigade and ignoring the exposure to enemy fire, many diggers ran to the crash site to gather souvenirs. No doubt this would have been a sight that Archie would never have forgotten, had he survived.
 
On 24th April, the German forces astride the Somme, launched an assault along the length of the Amiens front. The positions occupied by the 11th Brigade battalions were subjected to relentless artillery barrage which the 41st Battalion War diary described as lasting 5 hours. It is likely that Archie Marshall was killed by an artillery shell that day. Archie was buried in a temporary grave in the Heilly Military Cemetery. It is unclear if anyone was officially notified of his death but at least one person in Biggenden noticed his name in the casualty lists and a Miss L Button of Maleny wrote to base records on two occasions in December 1918 and February 1919 enquiring about the circumstances of Archie’s death and the location of his grave. Joe Murray signed for a small parcel of Archie’s effects including a wallet and some letters.
 
The Graves Registration Unit of the Imperial War Graves Commission began consolidating the small cemeteries on the Somme in the 1920s. Archie’s remains were exhumed and reburied in the Ribemont Communal Cemetery Extension near Albert. His headstone records his name, unit and date of death. The cemetery register contains no notation other than “Native of Queensland.”
 
When medals were being distributed on behalf of deceased servicemen, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Queensland informed the authorities in Melbourne that Joe Murray was not a blood relative of Archie Marshall and that therefore it would be proper that he, John Bleakley, Chief Protector of Aborigines, should take possession of the medals. After much correspondence, Mr Bleakley’s request was approved.
 
In 1923, the Murgon Shire Council presented a framed memorial commemorating Archie Marshall to the Office of the Protector. The Governor of Queensland in presenting the memorial plaque stated that “even though he was a half caste man, he had a white heart”.
The memorial certificate is now displayed at the Ration Shed Museum at Cherbourg. One wonders where Archie’s medals are now.