Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 3023  CAREY William Michael                      42nd Battalion
 
William Carey was born at South Brisbane to Michael and Catherine Carey. The family relocated to the upper Brisbane Valley where Michael Carey was employed at Colinton Station. William and his younger brother John both attended the nearest school in the township of Moore. After leaving school, William probably worked as a rural labourer at Colinton but by 1916 he was working at the State government owned timber mill at Taromeo as a teamster. Taromeo is a locality named after the first selection taken up in the Blackbutt area on the headwaters of the Brisbane River further up the Brisbane Valley Rail line from Moore. The mill was one of a number of mills in the Blackbutt area, established by the Queensland government, to provide sawn hardwood and hoop pine to the state timber yard in Brisbane by rail.
 
William took the train from Blackbutt to Brisbane to enlist, arriving at the recruiting office in Adelaide Street on 2nd September 1916. He stated his age as 25 years and 4 months and gave his occupations as teamster. He was rather short, measuring only 5’3” which would have seen him rejected 12 months previously; but the enormous losses incurred by the AIF in the Somme campaign of 1916 (23,000 casualties) had forced a relaxation of the entry requirements. William named his father of Colinton Station as his next of kin.
 
William was placed in the 11th Depot Battalion at the Rifle Range Camp at Enoggera for initial training. His brother, John, arrived in camp a month later as a reinforcement for the Light Horse. William was drafted as a reinforcement for the 52nd Battalion but was subsequently reassigned as part of the 7th draft of reinforcements for the 42nd Battalion, part of the 11th brigade of the 3rd Division AIF. The reinforcements travelled by train to Sydney where they embarked on the “Wiltshire” on 7th February 1917 and landed at Devonport in England two months later.
 
William and the other reinforcements travelled by train to the 11th Brigade Training Establishment at Fovant in April where they remained for the next four months. The 3rd Division had been extensively trained in England by the Divisional Commander, Maj Gen John Monash in preparation for the opening of the Ypres campaign in Belgium on 7th June. The brigades of the division were fully engaged in the fighting at Messines for the next six weeks. When the 11th Brigade was taken out of the line for rest and reorganisation, the reinforcements at Fovant were despatched to Poperinghe in Belgium. William was taken on strength by the 42nd Battalion on 28th August.
 
While the 3rd Division rested during September, other divisions of the AIF pressed on in a series of battles at Menin Road and Polygon Wood. The aim of the campaign was to attain the heights of a ridge on which the village of Passchendaele was the key. On 4th October, while elements of the 1st and 2nd Divisions attacked Broodseinde Ridge and the village of Zonnebeke, the battalions of the 11th Brigade began the long march from the ramparts of Ypres towards Broodseinde where they would relieve their fellow Australians.
 
The entire Ypres campaign, known officially as the Third Battle of Ypres, had begun in dry and sunny conditions. The ground to be covered between Ypres and Passchendaele was low lying and had an intersecting system of drains and dykes. This ground had been a major battlefield from the first months of the war and successive artillery strikes had churned up the ground and destroyed the drainage system. As the first companies of Australian infantry moved up to the start line for the battle of Broodseinde Ridge, heavy unseasonal rain began to fall; turning the entire landscape into a quagmire which exhausted the infantry as they slogged through thigh deep mud. Animals and wagons fell into shell craters filled with ooze and artillery pieces sank into the mud after firing only a few rounds. This was the situation that confronted the 42nd Battalion as they relieved other Australian units opposite Zonnebeke.
 
Against advice that was coming from those in the thick of the fighting, the British Supreme Commander Douglas Haig ordered his field commanders to push on with futile attacks to take Passchendaele. The 42ndBattalion war diary records the extent to which men and animals were suffering while holding the front line. The diary also records that the men were “done in” after almost 60 hours of constant fighting. In spite of this, an attack was planned for the night of 10th October.
 
Statements by eye witnesses from the 42nd in the Red Cross Wounded and Missing archives notes that William Carey was hit by a burst of machine gun fire during the advance and was seriously wounded. William was placed in a shell crater by a mate, Private Power. William asked Power to speak to another mate, Jack Mann, asking him to write to his family and friends. William was eventually taken from the battlefield on a stretcher and loaded onto a light rail train to be evacuated to #3 Australian Casualty Clearing Station at Poperinghe. On 13th October, William died of gunshot wounds to his chest and arm. He was buried in the Nine Elms Cemetery near Poperinghe with full Roman Catholic rights.
 
William had made some adjustments to his affairs before being posted overseas. He named William Shipperley, a friend and engine driver from the Taromeo Sawmill as his sole beneficiary. The estate included deferred pay and personal belongings, identity discs, a rosary and a broken wristwatch.
 
When war medals were being distributed, Michael Carey of Ivory Creek, Toogoolawah received his son’s empire medal, victory medal, memorial plaque and scroll. Remarkably, William Carey is not commemorated on the War Memorials at Blackbutt, Linville, Moore of Colinton. The listing of his name on the Nanango Memorial is perhaps evidence of the distances William travelled during his working life.