Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of Frederick and Barbara EMERY.

 
Fred Emery was born at Paradise on the banks of the Burnett River near the site of the present Paradise Dam. He attended school at Tairo but by the time of his enlistment, he was back in the North Burnett working as a butcher in Dallarnil. The Emery family may have been well known in that district and there is still a road named Emery’s Road in Dallarnil today. Fred’s brother, Percy, was also a butcher at it quite possible that the brothers ran a family business. A third brother, Cecil also lived in Dallarnil.
 
Fred Emery travelled to Brisbane to enlist on 13th May 1916. He told recruiters he was 22 years old and named his eldest brother, Cecil, as his next of kin. Fred’s parents, Frederick and Barbara were both deceased. After spending some time in a depot battalion at Enoggera, Fred was allocated as a reinforcement for the 31st Infantry Battalion. In September, Fred spent five days in the camp hospital with influenza before being granted home leave prior to being posted overseas. While on home leave, Fred took the opportunity to make a will with a solicitor’s firm in Maryborough; in which he bequeathed a gold mining lease at Stanton Harcourt to his brother Cecil and the residual of his estate to his only sister, Evelyn. On 21stOctober, Fred and the other reinforcements boarded the Boonah in Brisbane bound for England.
 
The 31st Battalion was part of the 8th Infantry Brigade of the 5th Division AIF. The 5th Division was created in Egypt after the withdrawal from Gallipoli in the “doubling” of the AIF from two divisions to four. When the newly organised AIF was ordered to the western front, the 5th Division was the first to see a major action at Fromelles in July 1916.
 
Fromelles was an unmitigated disaster. The brigades which were made up of a mixture of Gallipoli veterans and relatively inexperienced troops were put into a major attack just three days after arriving in the frontline. The objectives set in the attack by British General Haking were never going to be achieved. The 5th Division suffered five and a half thousand casualties, of whom two thousand were killed. Almost 500 were taken prisoner. The result of Fromelles was that the entire division was finished as a fighting force and it would take over twelve months for the shattered battalions to be rebuilt.
 
When Fred arrived in Plymouth on the “Boonah” in January 1917, the green reinforcements marched into camp at Rollestone. In March he spent some time in hospital at Fovant and then Hurdcott suffering from influenza and by May, Fred was on his way to join his battalion. On the journey though, he was detained for a month in a segregation camp at Etaples. Fred joined the 31st in the rear areas around Senlis in France. The entire 8th brigade was engaged in serious training and brigade manoeuvres prior to being put back into the line during the Flanders campaign in 1917.
 
The Flanders campaign is usually known by the most significant battle, Passchendaele. The series of battles in Belgium began at Messines in June of 1917 followed by a period of reorganisation before the begining of a series of actions that would progress along the Menin Road from Ypres east towards the Gheluvelt Plateau and the village of Passchendaele. On 20th September, the 1st and 2nd Australian Divisions took German positions just east of Ypres in the battle of Menin Road. The advance was so successful that the 4th and 5thDivisions were tasked with continuing the attack towards Polygon Wood.
 
For Fred in the 31st Battalion, Polygon Wood would be his first action. The 8th brigade was originally held in reserve but when the 15th brigade required support on it flank, the 31st was called up to the line. The wood which formed the main battle field had in previous years been a Belgian Army training ground complete with shooting range. The range had a pile of soil which had been excavated from a nearby railway cutting as a backstop or butte, and lines of pine trees along the boundary. During the 31st Battalion’s advance on 27thSeptember, it was reported that Frederick Emery was killed. A hand written note in his army file records that he was buried at Black Watch Corner, some two hundred metres behind the front line. Over the next two months, the ground along the Menin Road would be the target of almost relentless German artillery and it is no surprise that the grave of Fred Emery along with countless others was lost in the fury of war.
 
Frederick Emery is commemorated on the tablets of the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres. He shares the space with the names of 54,000 dominion soldiers who died in Flanders and have no known grave. Since the dedication of the Menin Gate in 1927, the citizens of Ypres have conducted a memorial service each evening under the vaulted roof of the memorial, except the four years of occupation in the 1940’s, which includes the recitation of the ode and the playing of the last post.
 
At the end of the war, the butte in the centre of Polygon Wood was chosen as the sight of the 5th Division Memorial and is now part of the Polygon Wood War Cemetery.
 
Fred’s brother Percy, with whom he was in partnership in the butchering business also enlisted. He returned to Australia disabled having lost the lower part of a leg.