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"...3778 Private Arnold Locke Beattie, grocer, of Cowra NSW. He enlisted in the 18th Battalion on 1 September 1915 and together with his older brother, Pte John Rolston Beattie, embarked on HMAT Runic on 20 January 1916. Both brothers were transferred to the 20th Battalion on 1 June 1916. Pte Arnold Beattie was wounded in action at Pozieres on 5 August 1916 and died of wounds at 34th Casualty Clearing Station on 8 August 1916, aged 21 years. Pte John Beattie was killed in action on 3 August 1916..." - SOURCE (www.awm.gov.au)

From Francois Somme 

Pte 3778 Arnold Locke Beattie
20th Australian Infantry Battalion,
5th Brigade, 2nd Australian Division, AIF
 
The Somme, today bathed in light and brightened by the songs of birds, was more than a hundred years ago, for a whole generation of men, a hell on earth, a nightmare that spread its darkness beyond the poppies and the green valleys and which, under the flames, became fields of death lacerated by the steel of sharp barbed wire, bruised by uninterrupted lines of trenches above which, through murderous and implacable artillery fire, was played for four long years, the funeral eulogy of war, a murderous symphony made of thunder followed by lightning that rained down despair and chaos in frightful breaths that, without end, mown down the lives of young boys, fathers and sons who, in this unimaginable chaos, fought with bravery, did their duty with loyalty in the name of their country and shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, united in the same suffering but gathered around the same causes, stood tall in the face of death and adversity, remaining strong in the camaraderie and brotherhood that gave them the courage to go over the top under machine gun fire, under grenades, in torrents of blood and watching over each other like brothers, bayonets forward, rushed towards the enemy lines, towards their destinies and then in the prime of their lives, fell side by side and gave their lives for peace.Young forever, in the fields and cemeteries of the Somme they are still there and solemnly watch over freedom, on sacred grounds of a friendly country that owes them so much and today we watch over them with respect, not only to say how they died but to say how they lived, with honor and devotion in order to perpetuate their memory,so that they may live forever.

Today, it is with the deepest gratitude and the utmost respect in my thoughts and heart that I would like to honor the memory of one of these young men, one of my boys of the Somme who gave his life for Australia and France.I would like to pay a very respectful tribute to Private number 3778 Arnold Locke Beattie who fought courageously in the 20th Australian Infantry Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Australian Division of the Australian Imperial Force and who died of his wounds 108 years ago, on 8th August 1916 at the age of 21 during the Battle of the Somme.

Arnold Locke Beattie was born in 1875 in Tocumwal,New South Wales, Australia, and was the son of John and Frances Jane Beattie, of "Rol-Arno", Hill Street West, Kogarah, New South Wales. He was educated at Pyree Public School and Goulburn Continuation School and after graduation, had his first taste of military life serving for a period of two years and two months in the 42nd Battalion, B Company of the Senior Cadets and Militia and then worked as a shop assistant and grocer until the outbreak of war.

When Britain declared war on Germany at 11am 4 August 1914, Australia, as a dominion of the British Empire, was automatically at war. In the following days, Australia would offer the Royal Australian Navy to the British Admiralty, as well as 20,000 men of any suggested composition. Thus, the Australian recruitment effort began for the 1st AIF.

Driven forward by hope and the promise of great adventure, Arnold enlisted on 1 September 1915 at Lithgow, New South Wales, as a Private in the 18th Australian Infantry Battalion, 9th Reinforcement, and after a period of training of just over four months during which he learned the rudiments of the modern warfare that was raging, he embarked with his unit from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A54 Runic on 20 January 1916 and sailed for Egypt, arriving at Alexandria on 26 February and proceeded for France the following month, on 27 March.

On April 3, 1916, Arnold, lulled by the calm of a peaceful voyage on the Mediterranean Sea, finally arrived in France and was disembarked in Marseilles then the next day, marched to Etaples where he joined the 2nd Australian Divisional Base Depot and on June 1, was transferred and taken on strength in the 20th Australian Infantry Battalion which was then in billets at Bois-Grenier. The 20th Battalion was initially raised in March 1915 in Liverpool, New South Wales, and a significant number of the men who composed it served and fought first in 1914 during the New Guinea campaign (with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force) then in 1915 at Gallipoli in the defense of Russell's Top. At Bois-Grenier, Arnold and his new unit therefore found veterans whose professionalism, fighting spirit but also camaraderie was very high, then, in this sector, joined the trenches on June 8th from where they relieved the 18th Australian Infantry Battalion and held their positions under fire from German artillery. During the days that followed, Arnold and his comrades were mainly employed in the repair and improvement of their trenches then dug advanced positions which they protected with barbed wire which they installed at night to avoid being spotted by enemy snipers and machine guns then on June 22nd moved back into billets and remained there until June 30th, date on which they joined their new billets at Jesus Farm.

From 6th July 1916 Arnold and his comrades underwent a further period of training and then on 9th July, after receiving new orders, the men of the 20th left their billets and marched through Pradelles, Ebblinghem, Arques and arrived in the Somme on 12th July, in the small village of Picquigny where they resumed their training including bayonet fighting, musketry exercises and attack practice. Shortly afterwards, on 16th July, they marched through Coisy, Herissart and reached Warloy-Baillon on 20th July, already seeing in the distance the thunder of artillery as it pulverised the Allied and enemy trenches in storms of fire. At this point it became clear that a final test awaited the 20th Battalion which on 25th July was pushed into the hell of the Battle of Pozieres.

The Battle of Pozieres was a phase of the Battle of the Somme (which began on July 1st 1916 with catastrophic casualties for the British Army). It commenced on 23 July 1916 and finished on 3 September 1916 and was the first protracted battle for Australian troops on the Western Front.

By mid July 1916 British attacks on the Somme had brought the front line close to the German occupied village of Pozieres high on the crest of Thiepval Ridge. For the British to advance Pozieres had to be captured. Three Australian divisions of the First Anzac Corps were assigned to the Western Front to help achieve this objective. Less than one third of the Australian reinforcements had fought at Gallipoli; they were largely inexperienced and ill-prepared to deal with the deadly onslaught of the battle-hardened machine that was the German Imperial Army.

It was at Pozieres that Australian soldiers were exposed to the full horrors of the Western Front. They were subjected to incessant German artillery attacks and devastating machine-gun fire, plus intense frontal assaults, all of which took an overwhelming physical and mental toll.

The Australian 1st Division was assigned the task of capturing Pozieres village and moving the Allied line north towards Mouquet Farm. At 12.28am on 23 July, the 1st Division made an assault supported by heavy artillery fire from the British 48th Division. They met with intense fighting and fierce German counter attacks but succeeded in taking the village and capturing the German stronghold of "Gibraltar", considered by the British to be impregnable.

Serjeant Archie Barwick of the 1st Battalion recorded on 24 July:
"All day long the ground rocked and swayed backwards and forwards from the concussion, men were driven stark staring mad and more than one of them rushed out of the trench over towards the Germans, any amount of them could be seen crying and sobbing like children their nerves completely gone,we were nearly all in a state of silliness and half dazed but still the Australians refused to give ground".

On 27 July, the 1st Division was relieved by the Australian 2nd Division. After just three days of battle the 1st Division had sustained 5,285 casualties. The capture of Pozieres had been a significant achievement, but a very costly one.

The 2nd Division consolidated the Australian position, but also at a cost. When they were relieved by the Australian 4th Division on 6 August they had suffered 6,848 casualties in ten days of fighting. (The 28th Battalion of the 8th Brigade had been reduced to 130 men out of 800; the 27th Battalion had just 100 survivors.)

Alec Raws of the Victorian 23rd Battalion later described the battle:
"One feels on a battlefield such as this that one can never survive, or that if the body lives the brain must go forever. For the horrors one sees and the never-ending shock of the shells is more than can be borne. Hell must be a home to it. The Gallipoli veterans here say that the peninsula was a happy picnic to this push.We are lousy, stinking, ragged, unshaven, sleepless.My tunic is rotten with other men’s blood and partly splattered with a comrade’s brains.Several of my friends are raving mad. I met three officers out in No Man’s Land the other night, all rambling and mad. Poor Devils!.The sad part is that one can see no end of this. If we live tonight we have to go through tomorrow night and next week and next month."

The Australian 4th Division was ordered to proceed north along the Pozieres ridge and capture Mouquet Farm. Despite several attempts the 4th Division was not able to achieve their objective. When they were relieved by the Australian 1st Division on 21 August they had sustained 4,649 casualties.

The diminished Australian 1st Division returned to the front line to continue the attack on Mouquet Farm. They made some ground but suffered 2,650 casualties in the process. The Australian 2nd Division returned to replace the remnants of the 1st Division, but did not fair any better, with 1,268 casualties in four days. They were relieved by the Australian 4th Division which continued the attacks on Mouquet Farm on August 27 and 29, but failed to take the position from the German defenders.

The last Australian attack on Pozieres was on 3 September, 1916. Troops of the Australian 1st, 2nd and 4th Divisions had made 19 attacks in 42 days but had sustained a total of 23,000 casualties, including 6,800 dead. Five Victoria Crosses were awarded during the Battle of Pozieres.

On 29 July 1916 official Australian war correspondent Charles Bean recorded in his diary:
"Pozières has been a terrible sight all day.The men were simply turned in there as into some ghastly giant mincing machine. They have to stay there while shell after huge shell descends with a shriek close beside them, each shrieking tearing crash bringing a promise to each man,instantaneous,I will tear you into ghastly wounds,I will rend your flesh and pulp an arm or a leg,fling you half a gaping quivering man (like those that you see smashed around you one by one) to lie there rotting and blackening like all the things you saw by the awful roadside, or in that sickening dusty crater".

Bean concluded:
"Pozieres Ridge is more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth."

On 26th July 1916, Norman and the men of the 20th Battalion attacked with dash, audacity and courage a German trench line called "OG1" not far from the infamous Windmill, an extremely well fortified German observation point, but it was a devastating failure and many men were mown down by machine gun fire. Worse, the artillery that was supposed to open breaches failed in its role and the Australians found themselves facing thick and impenetrable barbed wire. Gradually the casualty rate mounted horribly and the 20th Battalion fell back to its own lines in the Sausage Valley but left on no man's land about 200 men, killed, wounded and missing. However, Norman survived this first assault but a second attack, this time supported by the 6th and 7th Brigades on the left of the 20th Battalion, between Tramline and Bapaume Road was scheduled for 28th July. However, German artillery observers spotted the Australians massing in their trenches and a terrible artillery barrage broke their ranks and the attack was called off but the 20th Battalion, under shell and shrapnel suffered 56 casualties but once again Arnold survived and from 1st August, was employed with his unit, under artillery fire, in digging a new forward trench called "Emu Avenue" but also in constructing lines of communication as well of jumping off trench between Tramway and Bapaume Road.

Unfortunately, it was a few days later that Norman's luck ran out and he met his fate. On 5th August 1916, as he and the 20th Battalion were due to be relieved by the 45th Australian Infantry Battalion, German artillery shelled the trenches held by the battalion heavily and Norman was seriously wounded by shrapnel to his left leg. He was immediately evacuated from the front line and admitted to the 34th Casualty Clearing Station at Daours but despite the treatment he received, he sadly died three days later on 8th August 1916. He was 21 years old.

Today, Arnold Locke Beattie rests in peace alongside his friends, comrades and brothers in arms at Daours Communal Cemetery Extension, Somme, and his grave bears the following inscription: "To live in hearts we love is not to die."

Arnold Locke Beattie had a brother who, like him, fought bravely during the Great War. He was Private number 3779 John Rolston Beattie who, with his brother, fought in the 20th Australian Infantry Battalion. Sadly John was killed in action at Pozieres five days before his brother, on 3 August 1916 at the age of 23. Sadly, his body was never found and today John's name is remembered with love and respect on the walls of the Australian National Memorial in Villers-Bretonneux, Somme, alongside the names of 11,000 Australian soldiers who, in the Somme and in the north of France have no known graves.

Arnold and John, you who were so young, at the dawn of a path that was only just beginning, it is together, with faith and hope that you answered the call to do your duty, to spread peace, to make your country proud then, with your heads held high and your hearts filled with courage, determination, guided by the highest values, by a spirit of brotherhood, you marched with conviction alongside all the sons of the Australian nation whose bravery was seen with admiration for the first time on the hot and bloody beaches of Gallipoli where they fought with pride alongside their New Zealand brothers in arms and together, climbed with enthusiasm through the red earth, blood red hills of Lone Pine on which, in sweat, in effort, in camaraderie and sacrifice was born the ANZAC spirit which guided the young Australian soldiers to give the best of themselves but on the sand of the peninsula, thousands gave their lives and joined the silence of an eternal grave. Bruised, stunned by a hell of which they discovered the reality, all the brutality and horrors, the Australian soldiers mourned their friends, their brothers who, so far from their loved ones, paid the supreme sacrifice which inspired their comrades never to retreat, never to give up and, even if their ranks were swept under the machine guns at The Nek, annihilating four heroic waves of men of exceptional courage through the barbed wire, shedding their blood together under the burning Turkish sun, they continued to move forward, always fighting in the front line like courageous devils and charged bayonets forward into the clay of the fields of Fromelles where so many of them were riddled with bullets and shrapnel but, even in this hell, annihilated, falling one after the other, they refused to retreat and joined their friends in the heat of battle, united in life and death in the most beautiful bond of camaraderie so that others could live after them because beyond their courage, they did not only fight for peace and freedom, they fought for the cobbers, the friends, the men who stood by their side and who were their everything in this nightmare that was the great war which, in blood and mud, was to put an end to all wars but, for the Australians, the nightmare did not end at Fromelles and already exhausted by the torments, by the sadness, by the invisible wounds buried deep in their flesh, they received the order to join the fields of the Somme which, under the shells and bullets, was nothing other than a vast plain filled with despair whose landscapes were once so peaceful and gentle but who, under the shells, under the bullets, became grey fields empty of life, meat grinders that the soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force bravely crossed under their slouch hats and who, in the trenches of Pozieres, in the mud of Flers, in the ruins of Villers-Bretonneux and Amiens, held the front line and fought like real lions. Admired with the greatest respect by their French brothers, they were described as true warriors who were never afraid, who never turned their backs on the fight and who, despite what they endured, always had a smile, always a good mood that nothing erased from their faces even if their eyes carried the terrible reality of the battles in which they were led. Brave among the bravest, they showed themselves to be heroic but, through the poppies, lost so many of their brothers who never had the chance to return home as was the case for Arnold and John who together, in Pozieres, for Australia and France, sacrificed their youth and gave their today and who today, still stand proudly watching over each other in the eternity of a peaceful rest that they found after so much fury on the battlefields. They were young, they were brothers and here, in our hearts, will forever be our sons over whom I will watch with infinite gratitude, with care, with dignity and respect to honor, to perpetuate the memory of the young Diggers, my boys of the Somme but also to keep alive, to grow the already strong friendship that unites Australia and France and of which I feel honored and proud every day.

Thank you so much Arnold and John, for all you have done for my country which owes you so much. In the Somme, in Amiens where I live, the memory of the Australian soldiers and the ANZAC spirit will live forever. At the going down of the sun and in the Morning, we will remember them.