Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

"...2377 Sergeant Francis Edward Patch, 14th Brigade Field Artillery, of Crow's Nest, Qld. A mill hand before enlisting in August 1915, Sgt Patch left Australia for Egypt with the 16th Reinforcements of the 2nd Light Horse Regiment in March 1916 and transferred to the 14th Brigade Field Artillery before its arrival in France for service on the Western Front in May 1916. He was wounded at Messines in June 1917, and was awarded the Military Medal (MM) for bravery in the field. Sgt Patch was killed by German artillery whilst the brigade was moving from Ypres towards the front line near Hooge, Belgium, on the 29 September 1917, aged 28." - SOURCE (www.awm.gov.au)

# 2377 PATCH Francis (Frank) Edward MM               14th Field Artillery Brigade
 
Frank Patch was born at Cooyar Station near Yarraman, the second son of Thomas and Elizabeth Patch. Frank’s father stated that his son had attended Moss View School along with his elder brother Joseph. Upon leaving school, Frank gained employment as a mill hand in a timber mill at Crow’s Nest.
 
Frank enlisted in Toowoomba on 16th August 1915. He gave his occupation as mill hand and named his father of Emu Creek, Crow’s Nest as next of kin. Frank was 26 years old and was passed by the medical examiner, being almost six feet tall and weighing eleven stone. Frank took a train from Toowoomba to Brisbane and then on to Enoggera where he went into camp with the Light Horse reinforcements. He spent six months training at Enoggera before travelling to Sydney to embark on the “Star of Victoria” on 31st March 1916. The embarkation roll shows Trooper Frank Patch as a member of the 16th reinforcements for the 2ndLight Horse Regiment. When the reinforcements arrived in Egypt, they were marched in to the Light Horse Depot at Tel el Kabir.
 
The Light Horse units in Egypt were destined to be attached to the Egyptian Expeditionary Force which would remain in the Middle East while the bulk of the AIF, having gone through a major expansion, was being prepared for deployment to the Western Front. The demands of the Western Front campaigns called for a large number of transport and artillery units, all of which required experienced horseman. Many of the reinforcements in the Light Horse depots were reassigned to artillery, ammunition columns and general transport.
 
On 15th May 1916, Frank was reassigned as a gunner to the Tel el Kabir Artillery Depot from which he embarked on the “Corsican” for a voyage to England. Upon arrival in England, Frank was sent to a gunnery school before being placed in the Artillery Training Depot at Larkhill in Wiltshire on 18th September. Five weeks later, Frank was promoted to the rank of sergeant. Larkhill was a training camp for a new division being raised in the AIF, the 3rd Division, under the command of Major General John Monash. Most of the men assigned to the 3rd Division had been recruited directly from Australia with a few specialist role filled from reinforcement camps in Egypt.
 
Field artillery in the AIF consisted of 18 pounder quick firing field guns and 5.2” howitzers. A Field Artillery Brigade usually was made up of three batteries of 18 pounders and one battery of howitzers. In each case, the gun was hitched to a two wheeled limber which was in turn hitched to a team of six horses or mules. It was found that mules were more dependable in hauling the heavier howitzers. On 26th October 1916, Sergeant Frank Patch was assigned to the 120th Howitzer Battery of the 15th Field Artillery brigade. As sergeant, Frank would have been the senior NCO for one, or more gun crews. When the brigade was on the move, Frank would have ridden his own horse.
 
The bulk of the 3rd Division crossed the English Channel over several days in November 1916 where the division went into front line duty on the Western Front on the French / Belgian border. It appears that the 15thFAB was not included in this deployment and the brigade was soon disbanded with men and equipment being distributed to other artillery brigades in the 3rd Division. Frank crossed over to France in early 1917 but his assignment to a new unit was disrupted by a bout of mumps which kept him in an isolation hospital at Havre for several weeks. On 21st April, Frank was taken on strength by the 114th Howitzer Battery of the 14th Field Artillery Brigade.
 
The Commander of all British and Dominion Troops on the Western Front, General Douglas Haig, planned to conduct a campaign in the Ypres salient in Belgian Flanders aimed at spearing through the German defenders to the Belgian ports on the English Channel. To do so he planned for a series of battles in the summer and autumn of 1917, each of which created a stepping stone to the next objective. The first of these stepping stones was a ridge line which was occupied by the enemy and overlooked the ground that was to be used for the build-up of British forces. The ridge ran almost due south from a position just outside the historic city of Ypres, where spoil from a railway cutting had been dumped (the famous Hill 60) towards the village of Messines and on to Warneton on the French border.
 
The preparations for the Battle of Messines were carefully planned. Large scale models of the terrain to be covered were constructed and the infantry were walked through the models to familiarize themselves with their objectives. The general in charge at Messines had three and a half million artillery shells at his disposal which would be fired by British, Canadian and Australian gunners in the days leading up to the attack. In addition, British and then Australian tunnellers had been undermining the Messines Ridge for almost 18 months and had placed underground charges in tunnels directly underneath the German defences.
 
At 3:10 am on the 7th June 1917, 19 of the underground mines beneath the Messines Ridge were fired simultaneously. It was the largest man-made explosion in history and the noise was heard in England. The Australian gunners turned their attention to providing a creeping artillery barrage for the advancing infantry of the 3rd and 4th Australian Divisions as they moved over the shattered ground.
 
On 8th June, while the 114th Battery were continuing to support the infantry, the German artillery commenced counter battery fire. A German shell landed in an ammunition dump close to the 114th gun lines starting a fire. Frank Patch organised a team of men to fight the fire which contained the threat until another shell landed in a dump of gas shells, which promptly exploded. Frank was hit in the left arm by a shell fragment and was ordered to abandon his efforts. He was taken to the 29th Casualty Clearing Station before being moved by ambulance train to the 9th Australian General Hospital at Rouelles near Havre.
 
The wound was not too severe and with his arm in a sling, Frank was discharged to a convalescent depot. By the 28th June, Frank was back in the gun lines where he learned he had been awarded the Military Medal for leadership and devotion to duty during ammunition fire. As a recipient of the Military Medal, Frank was entitled include the letters MM after his name.
 
By September of 1917, with Messines Ridge in British hands, the British command could turn its attention to the second phase of the campaign which it was hoped would lead to a German capitulation in Belgium. From the shattered city walls of Ypres, the Menin Road ran almost due east across the low marshy ground towards a series of low ridges at Broodseinde and Passchendaele. The first action was aimed at capturing Westhoek Ridge to the north of the Menin Road. The battle is usually referred to as Menin Road and involved the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF on 20th September. As a continuation of the advance made, the 4th and 5th Divisions attacked Polygon Wood on 27th September.
 
With success at Menin Road and Polygon Wood, the artillery lines were then too far behind the front to provide accurate fire during a creeping barrage and so the guns teams had to limber up and move up along the Menin Road. Such movement was easily noticed by German artillery spotters and targets along the road had previously been registered on their gun plots. When elements of the 114th Howitzer Battery reached the aptly named Hell Fire Corner, a salvo of 5.9 shells landed amongst them. Sergeant Frank Patch was killed outright.
 
Frank’s body was taken to the Ypres Reservoir Cemetery within the city walls where he was buried. Frank had named his mother, Elizabeth Patch of “Roslyn” Emu Creek via Crow’s Nest as his sole beneficiary. His father signed for his son’s medals in the 1920’s. When permanent limestone headstones were being erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission, Frank’s family chose a personal inscription: HE FELL ON THE BATTLEFIELD WHILE DOING HIS DUTY FOR KING AND COUNTRY.