I knew by the screams that someone had caught it
One hundred and five years ago, on 14 August 1916, brothers Robert (Bob) and Stephen (Steve) Allen, from A Company, 13th Battalion, AIF, picked their way down Tom’s Cut, a communications trench near Mouquet Farm. Part of a group of 10 men, they had been detailed to carry rations to their company near the front line. It was their second trip of the day.
The Allens, from Sydney, were part of a close-knit family, united by hardship. Their mother, Hester, had been widowed in 1897 leaving her to raise her five surviving children. By 1915 her eldest daughter had married and moved away. Her two unmarried daughters, Florence (Florrie) and Minnie, remained with her, as did her sons. Money was tight and the little family moved frequently, from one rented lodging to another, mostly in the Manly area of Sydney.
In July 1915 when the brothers enlisted in the AIF, 26 year old Bob was working as a labourer and his younger brother Steve as a carter. After initial training they were assigned consecutive service numbers and posted to the 10th reinforcements of the 13th Battalion. Shortly before they sailed for overseas service in September the family met together for a group photograph.
Before they left Sydney the brothers arranged to allocate part of their pay to their mother. Once they had arrived in Egypt to undertake further training, they pooled their remaining pay to buy gifts for their womenfolk at home. Each woman received a green silk handkerchief with a lace border and a white one embroidered with flowers. Embroidered souvenir cushion covers were selected, the colours carefully chosen for the intended recipient – pink edged with a sequinned blue fringe for Mrs Allen; yellow with a blue braided edge for Minnie, and dark blue with a mauve fringe for Florrie. Each cover was custom embroidered ‘To Mother [Minnie or Florrie] from Bob and Steve’. In addition, Hester Allen received a magnificent multi-coloured silk damask scarf woven with a pattern of flowers and mosques.
Expensive birthday and Christmas cards were purchased for the women.
The brothers did not enjoy either the training in Egypt or the dry and dusty climate. They were ‘dying a slow death by staying there’ wrote Steve. Both he and Bob contracted eye infections needing hospital treatment.
The battalion sailed for France in June 1916, where the bothers were separated for more than a month while Bob undertook further training. Once reunited in July they were rarely apart and were a source of amusement in their company because of their contrasting sizes and characters. Bob was the tall, dark serious one; Steve, short, fair and cheerful, was nicknamed ‘The Mascot’.
Some of Steve’s letters from France, written in July 1916, survive, one enclosing a pressed poppy he had picked in an abandoned trench. There are numerous references to ‘plenty of shells and bullets’ and ‘lead and iron flying about’. In our ‘little dugout’ Steve wrote, [we] ‘have plenty of company especially at night when the rats come in and kiss us goodnight and run about over us just as though we were a public roadway’.
As the Allen brothers, walking one behind the other, and the rest of the ration party moved along the crowded communications trench a shell came over and exploded on the parapet. The Allens were killed outright. Their bodies were lifted over the edge of the parapet to make room in the trench. A further five men in the party were wounded, at two of whom later died.
Hester Allen received news within two weeks that her sons were missing. By November 1916 she was receiving a pension on the assumption that they had died, but she was not formally notified of their deaths until the following March. In the same letter she was advised that ‘no reports of burial have been received.’.
Florrie took on the task of correspondence on behalf of her mother, both with the army and the Red Cross. Desperate to establish what had happened to Bob and Steve, and to hear that they had at least had a decent burial, she tracked down other members of their battalion, and was finally able to contact Private Will Hale, who had also been a member of the ration party.
Hale had just been released from 4th Australian General Hospital at Randwick, Sydney, where he had been receiving treatment for the ‘slight’ hand wound he had received when the Allens had been killed, nearly a year earlier. His detailed response to Florrie Allen revealed that two pairs of bothers had been members of the ration party. He had been immediately behind the Allens when they were hit, while his brother, Robert, was immediately in front of them. Described in records as mildly wounded, Hale’s brother, ‘having a rough time’, was still undergoing medical treatment in England a year later, unable to walk without the aid of crutches.
Will Hale went on to describe the moments after the shell had exploded: ‘I knew by the screams that someone had caught it. I could not get through for some time as I was half silly with shock. However when I could get through my brother was seriously wounded and your brothers were laying there. They had been shifted, because when I was returning to the front line again I could not see them’. He went on, hopefully, '[I] feel sure that they would be properly buried.’ Hale did not mention that he too had been wounded, in the hand, and had only sought treatment two weeks later, which resulted in a lengthy hospital stay.
In the years that followed Florrie still tried to establish details of her brothers’ burials.
Finding that two of the other men who had been in the ration party had known graves, she could not understand why her brothers did not. It may never have been pointed out to her that these men have been evacuated from the trench and had died of wounds. Her last recorded attempt to establish a burial place was made in 1921.
Hester Allen lived long enough to receive her sons’ medals and memorial plaques. She died in 1925. Bob and Steve’s bodies were never recovered. Their names are recorded on the Villers Bretonneux Memorial in France.
This article was originally published on 15 August 2016.