Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Arthur Bramley was born in 1894 at Bunnan, a small farming community near Scone in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW. His family moved to Muan on the Mungar to Monto rail line, perhaps in response to the railway opening up new farming opportunities.

Arthur reported to the Adelaide Street Recruiting Depot on 16th March 1916. He gave his age as 22 years and stated his occupation as labourer. Arthur named his father, John Thomas Bramley of Muan via Degilbo as his next of kin. He was allocated to the 11th Depot Battalion at Enoggera before being enlisted as an original member of the 41st Infantry Battalion.

Arthur in company with the 1000 or so members of the newly raised 41st Battalion journeyed by train from Brisbane to Sydney where the battalion boarded the “Demosthenes” on 18th May 1916. They arrived in Plymouth on 20th July after two months at sea travelling via the Cape of Good Hope. From Plymouth, the battalion marched out to the 3rd Division Training Camp at Larkhill.

The 3rd Division was under the command of a newly appointed divisional commander, Major General John Monash. Monash, unlike the other divisional commanders in the AIF at that time was not a career soldier. He had built a reputation as an engineer, lawyer and part time soldier in Victoria; and had been a brigade commander on Gallipoli. The 3rd Division was to be entirely Monash’s creation as he set to work on a detailed syllabus of training. The King, George V, was keen to meet this famous soldier and his volunteer army. His Majesty travelled down to Larkhill by train to inspect the division. Monash put on quite a show and it took almost two hours for the division to parade past, during which time the King and Monash both mounted on their horses chatted amicably. They would meet again almost two years later when the King would invest Monash with his knighthood in the field.

The 3rd Division continued to train in England while the other 4 divisions of the AIF fought battles at Fromelles, Pozieres and Mouquet Farm, Flers, Bapaume and Bullecourt. Monash was determined to ensure that his division was the best trained in the AIF. The 3rd Division crossed the English Channel on 24th November 1916 and went into billets around the French Belgian border.

As the fighting on the Western Front wound down during the winter months and both sides were more preoccupied with fighting the weather than each other, the British Commander, Douglas Haig, was planning on a new offensive for the summer of 1917. He proposed a methodical advance in the Ypres salient in Belgian Flanders. The 3rd Division of the AIF would form an integral part of the overall plan.

The ultimate aim of the 3rd Battle of Ypres was to capture the Belgian ports then in enemy hands and thereby deprive the Germans of access to the English Channel; but first a low ridge to the east of Ypres on which the village of Passchendaele was situated had to be secured; and before the Passchendaele Ridge could be taken, the Germans had to be removed from the Messines Ridge which overlooked the fields of Flanders.

The 3rd battle of Ypres; often incorrectly referred to as Passchendaele; began on 7th June 1917 with the blowing of 19 underground mines that had been tunnelled under the Messines Ridge, followed by an infantry advance to throw the Germans off the ridge. Monash’s 3rd Division had a key role in this. For Arthur, Messines was his first major action. Although the 41st Battalion had only a supporting role on the opening day, the battalion’s mettle was tested a few days later when the 41st was tasked with manning and holding a captured trench. The Germans retaliated with an almost constant artillery barrage of high explosive and gas. The 41st endured the onslaught for 18 days in the line, by which time the battalion strength was down to a third as a result of fatalities, wounding and the effects of gas.

After Messines, the 41st Battalion spent several months building up numbers by taking on reinforcements and returning wounded. In October, the battalion went back to the front at Polygon Wood, Broodseinde and then Passchendaele. The Flanders campaign which had begun with such promise in June had floundered in front of Passchendaele in late October. It had been a costly campaign in relation to not only casualties but also financially; which was defeated by the weather as much as by the enemy.

With the coming of winter, all of the Australian divisions went into camp around Poperinghe. Compared to the previous winter, the troops were able stay warm and dry due to the invention of the Nissen Hut of which hundreds were erected by the engineer corps.

The military situation at the beginning of 1918 was very different from that which existed in previous years. The Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent peace treaty on the Eastern Front had released almost 50 divisions of German Troops from the east; and presented the German commanders with a temporary numerical advantage which could be exploited on the Western Front. The advantage would only be short lived though as the expected troop surge of almost one million men provided by the United States Army would begin to have an impact in the latter half of 1918. The British and French Commanders were expecting a large German offensive in the first half of 1918, but their intelligence was unable to pinpoint where the offensive would strike. The British Commander on the Western Front, General Douglas Haig, expected the offensive in his sector to come in Belgian Flanders and as a consequence he kept his most reliable troops, the five Australian Divisions, in the area between Ypres and Armentieres to meet the threat. In January of 1918, Arthur enjoyed a two week leave in England before returning to his unit.

When the attack did come on 21st March 1918, it was mainly directed along the line of the Somme River in the Picardy region of France; ground that had previously been fought over in 1915 and 1916. The British army holding the line in that sector was unable to hold its position and retreated in disarray, relinquishing all of the gains made at such cost in the previous years and exposing the vital communication hub of Amiens to possible capture. In an attempt to hold the German onslaught and defend Amiens, General Haig ordered some of the Australian divisions south to take up positions astride the Somme.

In early April, the first brigades of Australians, which included the 41st Battalion of the 11th Brigade, arrived to meet the threat. It was at this time that Haig, fearing that if Amiens was taken the war would be lost, issued his famous “backs to the wall” speech which was read out to all of the defenders.

One notable event in the 41st battalion lines occurred on 21st April and which is recorded in the battalion war diary. The Fokker triplane flown by the German ace, Manfred von Richthofen, was brought down by ground fire from the 3rd Australian Machine Gun Company. The plane crashed behind the Australian lines and many men, including those from the 41st raced to the scene to grab a souvenir, even though they were exposed to enemy fire. The loss of Richthofen was perhaps a portent of the changing fortunes of both sides. Four days after the plane crash, the Germans were driven out of the village of Villers Bretonneux by two brigades of Australians. The German advance would go no further.

Once the enemy’s march towards Amiens was halted, the Australians began aggressive patrolling of no man’s land all along the sector held by three AIF divisions. At the end of May, Monash was promoted to Lieutenant General and named as the overall commander in the field of the five AIF divisions. One of the first actions planned by Monash was a limited but scrupulously planned attack on German positions at Hamel. The plan included the use of tanks as water and ammunition carriers, aircraft dropping resupply by parachute to the advancing infantry, and the use of coloured smoke shells to give the appearance of gas.

As a gesture of international good will, a company from the 131st United States Regiment was included in the order of battle for Hamel which was timed to coincide with US Independence Day. The Americans were subsumed into the 41st battalion with a platoon of US soldiers added to each of the companies of the 41st. At the last minute, the US Command refused to allow the 131st to be included because General Pershing would not allow US soldiers to be led by non US commanders. Some sources suggest that many of the Americans defied their own commanders and joined the attack anyway. Hamel was an enormous success and it raised the stature of Monash and his diggers in the eyes of both the British and French Command.

A month after Hamel, Monash was charged with planning an even larger assault in the same area on the south bank of the Somme. The plan called for all five AIF divisions, three Canadian divisions and a number of British divisions which included Haig’s great love, cavalry. The tactics that worked so well at Hamel were included in the Battle of Amiens which began on 8th August. Amiens effectively broke the German Army on the Somme with an advance of almost 10 kilometres. The German Field Commander, Ludendorff, called it the blackest day for the German Army. The entire 3rd Division, which included the 41st Battalion advanced as far as Harbonnieres where they dug in. The AIF had been at the centre of the line and had captured huge amounts of equipment and prisoners.

So well received was the outcome of Amiens that many senior commanders, including Haig, Field Marshall Foch and even King George V all called at Monash’s headquarters to congratulate him. The time spent gladhanding would have been better spent in planning follow up operations as pauses in the advance gave the Germans time to reorganise.

On the 12th August, the 41st Battalion was dug in on a front just to the south of the Somme at Proyart. German artillery was heavy and at some time Arthur Bramley was “killed outright” by an exploding high explosive shell. He was buried in a temporary grave marked with a wooden cross between Mericourt and Proyart.

At the end of the war, many of the temporary graves that could be located were consolidated into permanent cemeteries. Arthur’s remans were reinterred in the Heath Cemetery, Harbonnieres. By the time that service medals were being sent to next of kin, Arthurs’s parents, John and Mary Bramley had returned to the Scone district in the Hunter Valley.