Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 104 BUCKLEY Denis Frederick                     8th Machine Gun Company
 
Denis Buckley was born in Alvaston in England where he attended the local Church of England School. Denis probably emigrated with his parents to Queensland around 1913 where the family took up farming at Goomeri in the South Burnett.
 
Denis enlisted in Brisbane on 8th July 1915. He stated his age as 21 years and occupation as farmer. Denis’s address was Currumbin, South Coast Line but his parents continued to live at Goomeri. Denis was initially allocated to the 31st Battalion which was being raised at Enoggera at that time, where he was allocated to the machine gun section. Most training for machine gun crews was conducted at Seymour outside Melbourne and Denis found himself taken on as a driver of the general service wagons pulled by a team of horses and which were used to moved the equipment required for putting the Vickers Heavy Machine Gun into use. At this time, he was nominally attached to the South Australian Machine Gun Company, a short-lived unit that was subsumed by larger MG units in 1916.
 
Denis embarked for overseas on the “Wandilla” in Melbourne on 9th November 1915. The Gallipoli campaign was still being fought and the gunners attached to the 8th Brigade were expecting to be sent to the peninsula but while they were at sea, the entire AIF Gallipoli force was preparing to be evacuated back to the camps in Egypt.
 
The men on the “Wandilla” arrived in Suez on 12th December and went into camp at Tel el Kabir on the Suez Canal. The Gallipoli force joined the large number of new recruits and reinforcements which had been building up over the last months of 1915.
 
In the early months of 1916, the size of the AIF was doubled and two new divisions were created. The 8thBrigade, as a complete unit, was attached to the 5th Division on 9th March 1916. Denis and his gun crew were redesignated as part of the 8th Machine Gun Company which would support the four infantry battalions of the 8th Brigade.
 
On 16th June the 8th MG Coy boarded a transport ship at Alexandria and disembarked at the French port of Marseilles seven days later. The entire 5th Division assembled at Hazebrouck in Northern France where they began acclimatizing to the conditions in their new environment. On 28th June there was an inspection by General Birdwood who was the Australian Corps Commander. The gunners spent two days in support in the Bois Grenier sector before being withdrawn to be added to the supports for the 8th Brigade Infantry which was to be put into the line at Fleurbaix.
 
After a 36 hour, but totally ineffective artillery barrage, the infantry rose up from the assembly tapes on the morning of the 19th July and charged towards the enemy lines, and uncut barbed wire. The guns of the 8thMG Coy were dragged by the gun crews on their little carts to set up on the second enemy trench. The charge at Fleurbaix, which is better know in Australia as Fromelles, was a disaster. Some scattered Australian companies reached the first trench line but were unable to hold the positions and were forced to withdraw back across the open ground which had become a killing field. On 20th July, the gunners were also forced to withdraw, dragging their heavy guns with them. It was probably during this withdrawal that Denis Buckley was wounded. He was admitted to the #1 Canadian Casualty Clearing Station with gunshot wounds to his face and shoulder. Denis succumbed to his wounds two days later and was buried in the nearby Bailleul Cemetery.
 
For the 5th Division, Fromelles was a disaster of such immense proportions that the entire division was finished as a fighting force for the next year. There were 5,500 casualties inflicted on the 5th Division in those two days in July. The division had been in the front line for only three days prior to the charge. Battalion and company commanders were appalled at the losses and Brigade Commander Pompey Elliott wept as the survivors of his Victorian brigade staggered back.
 
Denis’ family chose the following inscription for his headstone: GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN, HE DIED THAT LIBERTY MIGHT LIVE.