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Category:1st AIF/3rd
Div/11th Bde |
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- 41st Battalion AIF
(Queensland) [11th Infantry Brigade]
Formed Queensland February 1916. Departed Sydney Demosthenes
18 May 1916.
- 1st Reinforcements departed Sydney Demosthenes
18 May 1916,
- 2nd Reinforcements departed Brisbane Boorana
16 August 1916,
- 3rd Reinforcements departed Brisbane Clan
Macgillivray 7 September 1916,
- 4th Reinforcements departed
Brisbane Boonah
21 October 1916,
- 5th Reinforcements departed Brisbane Kyarra
17 November 1916,
- 6th Reinforcements departed Sydney Demosthenes
23 December 1916,
- 7th Reinforcements departed Sydney Wiltshire
7 February 1917,
- 8th Reinforcements departed Sydney Hororata
14 June 1917,
- 9th Reinforcements departed Sydney Ormonde
2 March 1918.
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Battle Honours:
Messines 1917, Ypres 1917,
Polygon Wood, Broodeseinde, Poelcappelle, Passchendaele,
Somme 1918, Ancre 1918, Amiens, Albert 1918, Mont St Quentin, Hindenburg
Line, St Quentin Canal, France and Flanders 1916-18
by
Ross Mallett (ADFA)
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41st Battalion
The 41st Battalion was raised at
Bell’s Paddock Camp in Brisbane in February 1916 with recruits from
Brisbane, northern Queensland and the northern rivers district of New
South Wales. It formed part of the 11th Brigade of the 3rd Australian
Division.
After training in Australia and
Britain, the 41st Battalion arrived in France on 25 November 1916. It
entered the front line for the first time on Christmas Eve and spent the
bleak winter of 1916–17 alternating between service in the front line,
and training and labouring in the rear areas.
Compared to some AIF battalions, the
41st’s experience of the battles in Belgium during 1917 was relatively
straightforward. It had a supporting role at Messines on 7 June,
captured its objectives at Broodseinde on 4 October with little
difficulty, and was spared the carnage of Passchendaele on 12 October.
It was some of the battalion’s more “routine” tasks that proved
its most trying experiences. At the end of June 1917, the 11th Brigade
was ordered to establish a new front line west of Warneton, in full view
of the Germans. Work carried on night and day under heavy shellfire and
the period became known to the battalion as “the 18 days”. The start
of August found the 41st holding ground captured by two of its sister
battalions in a feint attack on 31 July. Enduring continual rain,
flooded trenches and heavy shelling many of the battalion’s platoons
dwindled from 35 men to less than ten.
Belgium remained the focus of the 41st
Battalion’s activities for the five months after its action in October
1917 as it was rotated between service in the rear areas and the front
line. When the German Army launched its last great offensive in March
1918, the battalion was rushed south to France and played a role in
blunting the drive towards the vital railway junction of Amiens.
The Allies launched their own
offensive on 8 August 1918, and the 41st played an active role both in
the initial attack and the long advance that followed throughout August
and into September. The 41st participated in its last major action of
the war between 29 September and 2 October 1918 as part of the
Australian-American operation that breached the formidable defences of
the Hindenburg Line along the St Quentin Canal. The battalion was out of
the line when the war ended, and was disbanded in May 1919.
- 444 killed, 1577 wounded (including
gassed)
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Decorations
- 1 VC
- 1 CMG
- 2 DSO
- 13 MC, 3 bars
- 12 DCM
- 82 MM, 2 bars
- 4 MSM
- 26 MID
- 7 foreign awards
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