Wounded and missing : Private William Benton

“I saw a man called Benton wounded on August 5th at Pozieres Ridge. A piece of shell cracked his helmet and wounded him in the head… He walked out with other wounded men. They would have about two miles to go to the Dressing Station. There was heavy shelling. We have heard nothing of him since”.

Private Jacob Jacobson’s chilling matter-of-fact statement is all too often repeated in Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Bureau files. It is in these files that one detects the scattered and chaotic nature of battle, desperation of family seeking finite answers, and fellow soldiers and eyewitnesses describing last known sightings incapable of providing such finality.

Born in Staffordshire, England, William Benton and his family immigrated to Australia when he was 21 years and settled in Melbourne, Victoria. Married with two children, he worked as an upholsterer at the time he enlisted with the AIF in December 1915.

One hundred years ago today, on 5 August 1916, Private Benton of the 24th Battalion went missing. Listed as “evacuated and missing”, then later as “wounded and missing”, enquiries into Benton’s whereabouts commenced soon after. Prisoner-of-war lists and hospitals were combed for any sign of him. The chance he was taken prisoner offered some hope to his family.

Prior to going missing, Benton was stationed with his unit, the 24th Battalion at Pozieres Ridge, France. The 24th Battalion along with the rest of the 2nd Division suffered heavy casualties during August from German counter-attacks which took the form of continuous artillery bombardments. Benton was positioned in the support lines when he was wounded.

Over a year later in October 1917, a court of enquiry finally declared Benton “killed in action”, offering some finality to his family’s enquiries. Benton’s body was never found or recovered, but it was concluded that the heavy shelling of the area likely took his life and buried his body. With no known grave, mourning was made even more difficult for his family and like so many others commemoration in the absence of a body was limited to a name on a memorial roll or a bronze memorial plaque.

Forty one years later, in 1957, his body was finally located around 275 metres north of Pozieres. Benton’s aluminium identity disc was found among his remains, and other robust items preserved in the ground included a silver vesta, buckle, two brooches, button and piece of leather. Having confirmed the identity of the remains, these items were returned to his widow, Eunice Edna, who had just remarried.

Once missing and now found, Benton was reburied in the London Cemetery Extension, Longueval, France, thereby closing the book on a forty-year long case.