Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

He served under the alias of George Anthony Beyers. 

 
#2270 BEYERS George Anthony aka BEYER George Anton   25th Battalion
 
George Beyers was born at Gin Gin. There is some evidence that when George was six years old, his mother, Julienne, died in Maryborough, perhaps while giving birth to George’s younger sister Eva. George’s father, Johannes Heinrich Beyer moved his family to Kingaroy where George attended school. It was not uncommon for immigrants of Germanic origin to anglicise their names during the First World War and Johannes Henrich Beyer became John Henry Beyers. John’s son, George Anton Beyer became George Anthony Beyers.
 
When George presented himself for enlistment at the Adelaide Street Recruiting Office in Brisbane, he stated he was 22 years old, a labourer of Wooroolin. He named his father as next of kin and gave his address in Adelaide, South Australia. George was soon accepted into the 4th reinforcements for the 25thBattalion at the Rifle Range Camp at Enoggera.
 
On 18th September 1915, the reinforcements of the 4th echelon travelled by train to The Pinkenba wharf where they boarded the transport “Armadale”. After stopping at Port Melbourne, the ship sailed across the Indian Ocean into the Suez Canal arriving at Alexandria in Egypt in late October. While George and his fellow reinforcements had been making their way to the war, the 25th Battalion was manning posts at Gallipoli since landing there as relief in September.
 
After the failed August offensives at Lone Pine, The Nek and Suvla Bay, the Anzac front settled into a relatively quiet routine with both sides content to reduce offensive operations. This meant there was little need for AIF reinforcements on Gallipoli. Instead, men such as George remained in camp at Ismailia on the Suez Canal. The front line at Anzac had hardly progressed from that held on the first day and after a visit by Lord Kitchener, the Minster for War in the British Government, the decision was made in October to abandon the Dardanelles campaign. All of the Australians were evacuated from the Anzac beaches by Christmas 1915.
 
The Gallipoli veterans of the 25th Battalion arrived back in Egypt during January of 1916 and the 4threinforcements were taken on strength by the Battalion on 4th February. The 25th sailed for Marseilles in the middle of March and from there were moved by train to Northern France and the Armentieres sector of the front, near the French Belgian Border.
 
The 25th Battalion along with the other three battalions in the 7th Brigade spent several months in the Armentieres sector of the Western Front, which was often called the “Nursery sector” where newly arrived battalions could become acclimatised to trench warfare. In June the battalion was moved further north to the Ypres salient in Belgium at Messines. This was a livelier sector of the front and the battalion had a more difficult time. While occupying the front line on 25th May, George was charged with neglect of duty in that he had been tasked with taking up an observation post but was seen to be not observing. The commanding officer of the battalion gave George a sentence of 28 days of Field Punishment #2, during which he was supposed to be placed in wrist shackles for two hours each day. Such punishments were meant to act as a deterrent but in was common for the sentence to be commuted to performing fatigue work; particularly when men were required to occupy the fire steps.
 
On 1st July 1916, General Douglas Haig, Commander of the British Forces in France and Belgium launched his big push with the opening of the Battle of the Somme. The battalions of Kitchener’s new army, mostly conscripts, suffered appalling losses; 60 000 casualties on the first day of whom 20,000 were killed. The gains of the offensive were minimal but Haig was committed to pushing on. By the middle of July, three of the four Australian divisions in France and Belgium were moved south to the Somme where they would be thrust against the might of the German Armies. The primary objective was the high ridge on which nestled the village of Pozieres. The 1st Australian Division successfully took the village on the 24th July. The 2ndDivision, of which the 25th was a part were charged with taking two lines of trenches and a blockhouse on the crest of the ridge above the village.
 
The 25th moved up into the jumping off trenches on the night of the 29th July and awaited the artillery bombardment that would cut the wire in front of the enemy positions. The 25th was in the centre of the assembled battalions as they charged uphill to their objective but the German wire remained uncut. The German artillery poured enormous amounts of high explosive and shrapnel on the advance and after severe losses the battalion commanders of both the 25th and 26th Battalions gave the order to withdraw.
 
At a Battalion roll call conducted in the rear area after the 25th came out of the line, 345 men failed to answer their names. George Beyers was one of those unaccounted for; his file shows that he was Missing. These casualties made up over a third of the battalion’s strength prior to the battle.
 
For the AIF, Pozieres was the first significant battle in which a large number of men were missing in action. It took another 12 months before it was determined at a Board of Inquiry that George had been killed in action. Like so many of the missing at Pozieres, George’s remains were never recovered.
 
At the end of the war, the Australian Government resolved to construct a permanent memorial to the missing in France. The Australian National Memorial to the Missing is located within the grounds of the Villers Bretonneux Cemetery. There are 10,000 names on the stone tablets commemorating those who lost their lives in the defence of France, but have no known grave. George Beyers is listed there, Killed in Action 29thJuly 1916.
 
Today, on the site of a ruined blockhouse on the outskirts of Pozieres there is a stone tablet inscribed with the words of the official war historian, Charles Bean which reads:
 
“The ruin of the Pozieres windmill which lies here was the centre of the struggle on this part of the Somme Battlefield in July and August 1916. It was captured by Australian troops who fell more thickly on this ridge than on any other battlefields of the war.”