Thursday, 22nd June 1916: Journey to the Front

On the 16th June 1916 the troop ship Tunisian embarked from the Egyptian port of Alexandria with the 29th Battalion on board.  It sailed across the Mediterranean Sea with 13 other troop ships and a battleship escort.  During the six days at sea there were submarine alerts and some ships in the armada were diverted to Malta to escape the threat of being torpedoed. 

After six days at sea Thomas disembarked at the French sea port of Marseilles on the 22^nd June 1916. Within 24 hours he was on board a train to the Western Front.  The train was very crowded and he was required to share his compartment with seven other men, who were probably from his section.

During the 3 days and 3 nights journey, Thomas saw many wonderful sights that few men of his generation ever imagined they would see in their lifetime.  Thomas must have become enchanted by the beautiful French countryside that he passed; a stark contrast to the dry, sandy deserts of Egypt.  Along the journey he saw palaces, cathedrals and cheering crowds of women shouting “vive l’ Australie” on the outskirts of Paris.  One highlight for Thomas was the magnificent Palace of Versailles, which was located close to the railway line and thus provided a good view for soldiers, come tourists. Many soldiers wrote letters describing France as being like a “garden of Eden” (Corfield, 2000). 



Train from Marseilles transporting Australian Troops to the Western Front in 1916.  This is a similar train which transported Thomas to the Western Front.

 

In her book 'Fromelles: Australia's Bloodiest Day at War', Carol Wilkinson's (2011) fictional character, Private Walter McAlister, sums up the troops' mood during the train journey through France”

“On the train from Marseilles I felt like I was in a storybook myself.  The country was so beautiful, like a fairyland.  The trees are a different sort of green to the trees at home, a brilliant green.  And the fields are full of waving wheat and barley, sprinkled with the red of poppies and the blue of cornflowers.  It’s such a relief after the glaring light and blast-furnace heat of Egypt with its endless sand and flies.”  (p23-24)

Thomas would have been forgiven to think he was on some kind of adventure. After all, having never experienced battle, let alone fire a shot in anger, it was not in his imagination to anticipate the perils of trench warfare. However, two days into his train journey, he must have contemplated the job ahead of him and his battalion.  On the 24^th June, as if by rude awakening from the flickering beauty outside his carriage window, Thomas heard the thump! thump! sound of the preliminary bombardment at the Somme approximately 150km away.  The bombardment sent shock waves around the region, even rattling the windows of London. This artillery bombardment continued, day and night, until the official military Battle of the Somme began on the 1^st July, 1916 and concluded on the 18^th November, 1916 with around one million men losing their lives.

The train travelled to a section of the Western Front called Armentieres, which the English referred to as the ‘nursery’ section, as it was considered a quiet section of the front that provided an opportunity to ‘blood’ new soldiers to the war. The historian, Corfield (2000) criticised the use of the word ‘nursery’ arguing that during the preceding 12 months there had been many battles over this same land that claimed tens of thousands of lives.   The New Zealand soldier, Anthony Wilding, who was the Wimbledon Tennis Champion from 1910-1914, was one such soldier who perished in this region during 1915 (Lindsay, 2007).  These previous attempts by the British to take ground only made the Germans reinforce their defences, including constructing concrete bunkers and installing shrapnel resistant wire (Lindsay, 2007).

References

Corfield, R (2000), Don’t Forget Me, Cobber: The Battle of Fromelles, Corfield and Company, Vic.

Wilkinson, C (2011), Fromelles:  Australia’s Bloodiest Day at War. Black Dog Books, Vic.

Lindsay, P (2007) Fromelles. Hardie Grant Books, Vic.