In 2009, the remains of Parkes born World War I (WWI) digger #4840 Acting Corporal Leslie Leister were recovered as part of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Australian War Graves Office project to recover, identify and re-inter the remains of British and Australian WW1 soldiers interred in several mass graves at Pheasants Wood near Fromelles, France.

The project was the outcome of persistent research by retired Melbourne teacher, Lambis Englezos. Eventually he was successful and archaeological investigations began to uncover the remains of some 200 Australian and 50 British soldiers.

Acting Corporal Leister’s remains were recovered and he was identified in 2010 through mitochondrial DNA techniques.  

Originally, having no grave, his name was recorded on the walls of VC Corner, Australian Cemetery, Fromelles, France, the only all Australian Military Cemetery on the Western Front.  It is also the only cemetery without headstones. There are no epitaphs to individual soldiers, simply a stone wall inscribed with the names of 1,299 Australians who died in battle nearby and who have no known graves. The unidentified remains of 410 are buried in mass graves under two grass plots in the cemetery.  

Acting Corporal Leister’s remains are now interred in Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery (Row E, Grave No. 5) newly constructed in 2010 by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and his name erased from the VC Corner Memorial.

Acting Corporal Leister was born in Parkes in 1894 and was working as a Postal Assistant and living in Randwick, NSW, upon enlistment in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 28th August 1915 at Holsworthy, NSW.  At the time of enlistment in the AIF at age 21, he was serving with the 21st Infantry, Citizen Military Forces.  He gave his next of kin as his uncle, Robert Duncan Leister, Bogan Street, Parkes who, with his wife Elizabeth, were known to be living on the corner of Bogan and Church Streets up until least 1923

Private Leister was posted to the 3rd Battalion, 15th Reinforcements and embarked from Sydney on His Majesty’s Australian Transport A15 “Star of England” on 8th March 1916.

He was shipped to Alexandria, Egypt where, on 20th April 1916 at Ferry Post, he was posted to B Company, 55th Battalion formed by the survivors of the 3rd Battalion of Gallipoli fame and the new recruits.   It was here that he was promoted to Acting Corporal.  The Battalion sailed to Marseilles, France and arrived on 30th June 1916.  They arrived in the front lines near Fromelles on 12th July 1916. The 55th Battalion formed part of the 14th Brigade, 5th Division, AIF.

At the Battle of Fromelles on 19/20th July 2016, the 55th Battalion was held in reserve but was quickly committed to attack as the rear guard of during the retreat of this disastrous attack.  It was during this phase of the battle on 20th July 1916 that Acting Corporal Leister was severely wounded in the hip by a shell, possibly made a prisoner of war and later died of wounds at Fromelles to be later interred in the mass graves at Pheasants Wood.

Interestingly, nearby and serving with the enemy forces, the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment (BRIR), was the infamous Adolf Hitler.  Fromelles is a small village in French Flanders and was the locality of three disastrous encounters during the First World War.  Those of December 1914, May 1915 and July 1916, which were fought in exactly the same sector and upon exactly the same ground. The latter two actions unfolded in almost the same way, and on each occasion the final German coup de grace took place at precisely the same location, astride the Rouges Bancs road.  Even more uncannily, the number of missing as a result of the British attack in 1915 is almost identical to the Australian figure for July 1916: approximately 1300 men. The most important factor of all, however, is how the lessons learned in 1915 influenced the catastrophe of the following summer.

The Battle of Fromelles over 19/20th July 1916 was the first major battle fought by Australian troops on the Western Front and the attack was the debut of the AIF on the Western Front and the Australian War Memorial described the battle as "the worst 24 hours in Australia's entire history".

It was a feint or diversion designed to prevent the Germans reinforcing their troops on the Somme, where the Allies had launched a major offensive on 1st July 1916.  The ruse, however, was unsuccessful.

The German salient at Fromelles contained some higher ground facing north-west, known as the Sugarloaf. The small size and height of the salient gave the Germans observation of no man's land on either flank. The Australian 5th Division, under Major General J.W. McCay was to attack the left flank of the salient by advancing south as the British 61st Division attacked the right flank from the west. Each division was to attack with its three brigades in line, with two battalions from each brigade in the attack and the other two in reserve, ready to take over captured ground or to advance further.

The 5th Australian Division had arrived in France only days before the attack and relieved the 4th Australian Division, on the right flank of the Second Army by 12 July.  The Australian divisional artillery and some of the heavy artillery had no experience of Western Front operations and a considerable shuffling of divisions had already taken place, as I Anzac Corps prepared to move south to the Somme front, which hampered preparations for the attack.

The preparations were rushed and inadequate. Both the Australian and British troops involved lacked experience in trench warfare and the power of the German defence was significantly underestimated, the attackers being outnumbered 2:1.  Moreover, the Germans on higher ground enjoyed sweeping visibility and could see what was happening. Crucially, the attackers' inexperienced artillery units did not achieve their objectives in the preparatory bombardment.

In particular, they failed to deal with the Germans' lethal Sugarloaf machine-guns.

19th July began hazy but the time of the artillery zero hour was fixed for 11:00 a.m., ready for the infantry attack to begin at 6:00 p.m. A special heavy artillery bombardment began on the Sugarloaf at 2:35 p.m. by which time a German counter-bombardment was falling on all of the attack front, causing hundreds of casualties to the Australians and the field artillery crews of the 61st Division. 

The infantry assault of twelve battalions began at 6 pm with three and a half hours of daylight remaining. The Australian 5th and British 61st Divisions attempted to seize 4000 yards of front line centred on the ‘Sugar Loaf’.  The advance took place in daylight on a narrow front which left German artillery on either side free to fire into the flanks of the attack.  The Germans were entrenched behind high barbed wire entangled breastwork in steel and concrete line bunkers.

The front line to the north of the ‘Sugar Loaf’ was on average 200 metres wide and the Australians quickly crossed no-man’s-land, seized the German front line, and then pushed on for 140 metres in search of a supposed third and last line of the German trench system.  No such line existed and the Australians began forming a thin disjointed series of posts in the intended position.

Other Australians attacked opposite the ‘Sugar Loaf’ where no-man’s-land was 400 metres wide.  The Germans had survived the British shelling and quickly manned their machine guns.  Within 15 minutes they had decimated the attacking waves of Australians, forcing the survivors to find shelter.  British troops attacking south of the ‘Sugar Loaf’ suffered a similar fate and made no progress. The British planned a second attempt to capture the ‘Sugar Loaf’ salient and asked the Australians for help. This plan was cancelled but the news arrived too late to stop the Australians mounting another attack with equally disastrous results.

The general opinion of both the British and French commanders on the Western Front at the time was that maximum distance for attacks should not be more than 200 yards between trenches, yet, at Fromelles British and Australian troops attacked up to 400 yards toward the Sugar Loaf feature in daylight.  They all failed in achieving their objective and were slaughtered by enfilading machine gun fire and artillery bombardment.

When darkness finally arrived, communications trenches were constructed to bring up reinforcements, supplies and ammunition and to evacuate the wounded.  Groups two or three men ran out into no man’s land and to furiously dig potholes while being raked by machine gun fire and bombarded by shrapnel.  When these were about 5 feet deep a group of about 6 men would jump out and run to the pothole, deepen it and extend it forward to the next pothole and back the previous pothole until the communication trench was dug. 

The communication trenches were targeted by artillery and the sally-ports were under fire from German machine-gunners and became "death-traps".  

Where a break-through into the German lines was achieved, consolidation was slow as the troops lacked experience, many officers were casualties and there was no dry soil to fill sandbags, mud being substituted. German counter-attacks on the front and flanks, with machine-gun fire from Delangre Farm, De Mouquet Farm and "The Tadpole", began at 3:15 a.m. on 20 July, forcing a retirement to the German first line and then a withdrawal to the original front line. 

At 7:50 a.m. the order to retire arrived, although it was not received by some parties. German troops had got well behind the right flank and fired at every sign of movement, forcing the Australians to withdraw along the partially blocked communication trenches dug overnight.  

The battle was responsible for one of the greatest losses of Australian lives in 24 hours, although surpassed by a three Divisional attack by Australians at the Battle of Bullecourt in 1917. The Australians suffered 5,533 casualties in one night, the worst 24 hours in Australia’s military history. It was a staggering disaster. It was, in the words of a senior participant, Brigadier General H.E. “Pompey” Elliott, a “tactical abortion”.

The 5533 casualties – 178 Officers and 5355 soldiers on one night – was greater the combined casualties of the Boer War, Korean War and Vietnam War.

As a comparison, in the Normandy D-Day landings in 1944 the Americans had some 73,000 men and suffered some 4700 casualties with 1465 killed. It is as if all males in Parkes of military age today were wiped out overnight, a horrendous result. Truly “The Worst Day in Australian History”.

LEST WE FORGET