The Great Adventure

By Barry Allan

Following from my earlier book 'Black Sheep and Gold Diggers' this book tells the story of three of Elizabeth Vurlow’s sons George, Joe and Dave, who served in the AIF during World War One.
Joe joined first and went to Gallipoli where less than a day after arriving he fought in the battle of Lone Pine. From there he went to the Western Front and fought in nearly every major AIF battle until his luck ran out just before the war finished. Dave, the youngest, lied about his age and was second to join. He had many adventures, some of them in VD hospitals. George the eldest brother was married and was last to join. By the time he returned to Australia his life was changed forever.
The story includes descriptions of fighting in major battles seen from the boys' close-up and personal viewpoint, and the effects on their families after the war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Allan
• Release date: Apr 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476253619

Barry Allan

Barry was born in Melbourne but grew up in Brisbane until joining the RAAF where he served for 20 years. After leaving the RAAF he lived in Darwin until retirement then moved back to Brisbane. His retirement hobby was tracing his family tree, and after finding several convict ancestors he started writing about their lives in 2005. The books were originally published in print and have sold out. New information still comes to hand, but rather than reprinting new editions he has released them as ebooks that can be easily updated. The print books sold at cost and the ebooks are free because much of the information was contributed by other family members over the years. If casual readers enjoy the stories, that is payment enough.

Book preview

THE

GREAT

ADVENTURE

by Barry Allan

Copyright 2012 Barry Allan

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thankyou for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com where they can also find other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Author's Note

This book was first published in print in 2010 and follows on from my earlier book 'Black Sheep and Gold Diggers' that told the story of convicts Joseph Allen and Richard Venvill, and of the early lives of their descendants Bill Allan and Elizabeth Vurlow. Bill and Liz never married each other but had many children. Three of their boys George, Joe and Dave served in the AIF in World War One. This book is an account of the boys' army service, their family's situation during the war, and of the consequences for all of them that came afterwards.

The family's story at Footscray is based upon real events and the personalities, as far as they are known, of the people involved. For the military action I have used factual records, only inventing dialogue to give some life to the narrative, and occasionally including the boys in real battlefield incidents where they were known to be present but where no names were recorded. All the people named in the book were real and their actions are taken from sources such as Army Service records, Unit War Diaries, and two excellent books written about the 5th Battalion and the 6th Machine Gun Company. Both were written soon after the war by Officers who were in those Units. Those books have enabled me to include explanations of tactics, anecdotes about individual men, and background detail such as weather and specific battlefield conditions on particular days.

The spelling of place names has changed in some cases, and I have usually used the modern spelling to make it easier for the reader to find them on a map, but I have used Ypres here whereas the spelling now is Ieper. All the French towns mentioned can be easily found on internet maps, and I suggest that regular reference be made to those maps in order to follow the frequent and confusing movements of the Army Units. Even here I have omitted many route marches between billets that the troops undertook, to keep the story readable. For the same reason I have included few details of other Allied armies, but it should not be assumed that the Australians were in any way unique in enduring the conditions described.

I have simplified the descriptions of battles in most cases for clarity. There was much more going on, even concerning the three boys, than I have written here, but those details tended to complicate the story without adding much to the reader's understanding of it.

My thanks go to several people who provided assistance during my research. By some good luck I discovered Joe's daughters Rose and Margaret, who I previously didn't know existed, living in Melbourne. They provided valuable information about Joe, especially his life and attitudes after the war. However they knew almost nothing about his war service and had little information about Dave, Mavis or Ellen, and they had never heard of George or Tasman. June Howard knew Joe, his wife Daisy, Mavis and Ellen, and provided background information and anecdotes that helped me to gauge their personalities.

My thanks also go to Charlotte's niece Patricia Clements, the last living person to have seen George, who provided some personal anecdotes, background information and photos of Charlotte, Gwen and George junior. Also thanks to her daughter Gayle King who passed information back and forth to her mother, vetted the story for accuracy of family details, and encouraged me to get the book finished.

I myself met Mavis and Ellen more than 40 years ago, long before I had any knowledge of, or interest in family history, and so missed the opportunity to ask questions.

Barry Allan

2012

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 Melbourne 1914

Chapter 2 The AIF 1914

Chapter 3 Gallipoli 1915

Chapter 4 Lone Pine

Chapter 5 Footscray 1915

Chapter 6 Egypt 1916

Chapter 7 Western Front

Chapter 8 Fromelles

Chapter 9 Pozieres

Chapter 10 The Somme

Chapter 11 First Pioneer Battalion

Chapter 12 Footscray 1916

Chapter 13 Bullecourt

Chapter 14 The Long Rest

Chapter 15 Ypres

Chapter 16 Bulford 1917

Chapter 17 France 1918

Chapter 18 Final Battles

Chapter 19 Footscray 1918

Chapter 20 Coming Home

Chapter 21 The Twenties

Epilogue

Prologue

The young men of Melbourne were excitedly anticipating the grand opening of Luna Park just before Christmas in 1912. The rides and other attractions that it offered were just what they needed to provide an interesting place to take a girl on an outing. Moving pictures were still a novelty that they liked, but the shows didn't change often enough to fill their needs. Picnics had always been popular, but a train trip to the country and a walk to some suitable spot was becoming somewhat humdrum. Daylight public bathing had only been legalised a few months earlier, but it was still banned on Sundays. The boys had at first enjoyed the experience of seeing their girlfriends in less than the usual full-cover clothing that was fashionable at the time. Their comparatively scanty neck to knee bathers had aroused the lads, and it has to be said, the girls too, and there was a general increase in the level of sexual activity among the youngsters. Swimming was seasonal though, and Melbourne's weather wasn’t always suitable for a day of sightseeing at the beach, so a new fun place to take a girl was just what they needed.

George Allan and Charlotte Bennet were both eighteen years old and had met only recently, but had already found a strong mutual attraction. George knew it wouldn't be long before they fully consummated their relationship, and he was looking forward to the event. A day at Luna Park with a ride on the Scenic Railway, a boat ride through the Caves of the World, some fun in the Penny Arcade and a performance at the Palais de Follies was almost guaranteed to get a girl in the mood.

And so it did. By the time of George's nineteenth birthday in February of 1913 they had thoroughly consummated their relationship, and continued to do so at every opportunity. Charlotte turned nineteen a month later, and the party continued.

George was 5 feet 7 inches tall, strongly built, having fair hair and blue eyes, and with his family trait of square jaw and heavy eyebrows. He would be described as rugged rather than handsome. He was still growing and would be a strong young man in a few years. He lived with his parents and worked as a labourer at a quarry near Footscray. That work was building muscle onto his solid frame. Charlotte was 5 feet 5 inches tall, with dark wavy hair and a cheeky grin that went with her outgoing personality. Her father had died a year earlier and her mother now took in boarders to help with their poor financial position. Charlotte worked as a domestic servant, so was also helping with the finances.

The couple's family backgrounds were very different, but they hadn't got so far in their relationship for that sort of personal information to be exchanged. It was just sex for the moment, and it was all going so well that they both ignored any possible consequences until June, when Charlotte found she was pregnant.

She had tried to time their liaisons to minimise the chance of pregnancy but it had gone wrong somehow. She wasn't sure what George's reaction would be when she told him, but decided on a direct approach. Their next outing the following Sunday was memorable for both of them, and she broke the news to George with some trepidation.

'George I think I'm pregnant.'

George was momentarily lost for words, his brain slowly processing the information. No immediate course of action came to mind and he had no idea what to do next. This was a complication that he wasn't prepared for. Then the obvious question formed in his mind.

'Ah jeez Lottie are you sure? That will put a spoke in our wheel.'

'Yes I'm fairly sure. I'll be seeing the doctor this week.'

'Well what can you do about it?'

Charlotte bristled. 'We're in this together George, so don't think you're just going to leave it all to me. Anyway, we can't do anything about it!' Charlotte had already dismissed any thought of abortion. Her Catholic upbringing prevented any such possibility. 'I'll have the baby and I expect you will do the honorable thing and marry me.'

George could see his little world crumbling at the thought of marriage at the age of nineteen. This wasn't part of his life's plan, vague as that was. Working at the quarry and having a good time on his days off summed up his life goals. Charlotte was a good friend and sex partner, but babies and marriage were things he hadn't even considered.

'What about adoption? You could give it away and no one would know.' George's mind was still processing all the possible scenarios he could think of, none of which so far involved himself.

'My mother would know, and anyway, this is your baby too. Do you want to give away your own flesh and blood and never know if it's being properly looked after?'

Then, in what George thought of as a compromise, he suggested; 'How about we just live together? We tell people we're married, and no one will ever know we aren't.'

'Again George, my mother will know! If you're willing to live with me, why not get married?'

George had no answer to that because he'd never thought the logic through. All he knew was that his own parents weren't married, and it seemed to work for them. Charlotte's forcefully presented opinion started to sway him.

'Well we'd have to get married soon. Where would we live? There isn't room at our place for you and a baby. I don't earn much at the quarry so money will be short too. It would be hard going.'

Charlotte could see George wavering. 'Yes, I'll have to stop working soon, but we'll just have to make do. If we both pull together we can make it work.'

They went home that evening and George spent a restless night thinking about his predicament. The problem as he saw it wasn't that Charlotte was going to have a baby and would have to look after it for years, it was that he was going to have to get married before he was ready. Jeez, there were still plenty of girls out there who he hadn't tried out yet, and he was going to miss out on all that fun.

By the time the doctor confirmed Charlotte's pregnancy though, he'd come to terms with it all. George was a basically decent sort of lad, and he decided to shoulder his responsibilities and become a family man. All that was left now was to tell both their families they were getting married. He didn't know what Charlotte's family would think, but he knew his own parents wouldn't care.

George was born into a large family group that consisted of his unmarried parents, Liz and Bill, and eight half-brothers and half-sisters from their former marriages. Then there were George and his three younger brothers, and a baby sister. This complex family structure had evolved over the years, and was mostly his mother's doing, although she hadn't planned it that way. She just didn't foresee that her disinterest in social conventions as a young woman would lead to complications later.

Liz had been an unconventional girl right from the start. She was born in 1862 under a bullock wagon beside the muddy Melbourne - Ballarat road near the town of Bacchus Marsh. She was the grand-daughter of a former convict named Richard Venvill, who was pardoned in Tasmania and then moved to the Port Philip District before Melbourne was founded, and eventually became the manager of a sheep property near Mount Egerton. His eldest child Susan was Liz's mother.

Susan had married a Swiss immigrant named Alexander Vurlow and Liz was their first child. Liz eventually had three sisters and four brothers, and the kids' early childhoods were spent being dragged from place to place around the goldfield towns near Ballarat as their father worked for the many small gold mining companies that came and went in that district. Finally in 1868 the family settled at the small town of Mount Egerton, which had been established in the gold rush years.

As Liz grew into a young woman she had a reputation for being strong-minded, and something of a rebel. She saw herself as being progressive, and was sympathetic to the socialist views that were flourishing in the younger generation. She delighted in flouting convention and seeing the shocked reactions of older people to her outspoken criticism of what she considered to be their old-fashioned ways. She also noticed that since the development of her womanly figure at the age of fourteen, she attracted the attention of boys. She wasn't especially pretty, but her well-developed figure had become a magnet for the hormone-rich boys of Mount Egerton. She rejected their advances until she was old enough to go to the weekly dances that all the young men and women in the district attended. It was the usual way to meet members of the opposite sex. It was also the place that they learned the practical aspects of sex.

Every town had its lover's lane where young couples went to experiment, and Liz had become familiar with all of them. She discovered early on that she was able to excite boys by letting them touch her body, and she was amused to see the effect it had on them. It wasn't long before a persistent lad caused her to take the plunge and have full-on sex with him. It was not particularly satisfying for Liz, but once that hurdle was cleared, she soon discovered other young men who showed her how much fun it could be.

When Liz's luck ran out in 1884 and she found she was pregnant, she had no intention of marrying the father, and decided to ignore people's disgust at her loose morals. Her Grandfather, the ex-convict, was more understanding than the rest of the family, and his support helped her through. The boy was born in 1884, and she named him James. She registered his birth under her own surname of Vurlow and recorded his father as 'unknown'.

Liz had a break from the dances for a while, but as James grew older she could leave him with her sisters and go out to enjoy herself again. She was more careful with sex now, but eventually found herself pregnant once again. She registered her second son in 1887 as Thomas Vurlow, illegitimate, father 'unknown'. Again her Grandfather supported her through the family's embarrassment.

Another four years of casual but careful sex culminated in her third pregnancy in 1891. This was too much even for her Grandfather, and under intense pressure she decided to marry the father. The man chosen was a Welshman named Richard Williams who had only recently come on the scene. They were married in Bacchus Marsh in 1891 and their baby girl was born in 1892. She was named Ellen and was registered in the approved manner as Ellen Williams. Richard had suffered from asthma on and off for some time, and just a year after they were married, he suffered a major attack and died. Liz then had three children to raise on her own.

Bill Allan had been born in 1860 about 25 miles north of Mount Egerton at the gold mining town of Blackwood. He was the son of another convict Joseph Allen, who had been a Glasgow street hoodlum, sentenced to ten years for assault and robbery. He was pardoned as part of a Political scheme to inflict convicts upon the otherwise free settlement of Melbourne in the 1840s. He immediately became a foot policeman, and then a detective. After being sacked from the Victoria Police Force in 1854 during a purge to remove former criminals from their ranks, he moved to the bush. He found gold in the hills north of Ballan that would later become the settlement of Blackwood. Old Joseph had lived to the age of 82 and by the time he died in 1902, he was known as a pillar of the Blackwood community. By then, no one remembered that he had been a convict, or that he had been arrested for trying to kill his wife, Bill's mother, in 1870.

Bill and his mates thought nothing of travelling miles to Mt. Egerton or to Ballan for the dances, where he met Liz. She was always surrounded by suitors so Bill never formed a permanent relationship, but they had casual sex over a few years from the late 1870s. In 1882 Bill moved away from Blackwood to Allendale to work in the gold mines, and he soon found a new girl there to satisfy him. Her name was Alice and he made her pregnant almost immediately.

Contraception was not something young people thought about too much, and single girls often became pregnant. Marriage was common for girls from the age of 16, and many were rushed affairs to prevent embarrassment, not so much to the youngsters, but to their parents. Bill and Alice had one of those rushed marriages so that their first child would be conventionally registered with a mother and a father.

Bill and Alice then had four more children in quick succession, but Alice suffered health problems from having so many pregnancies so close together. In 1889 they were living at Clifton Hill in Melbourne when she and her last baby became seriously ill at the same time, and both died within weeks of each other. Bill was then left with four children to raise, and moved back to Blackwood to be near his mother.

Bill and Liz had seen each other from time to time over the years and each knew the other's situation. So, after Richard Williams died, they decided to combine their two families. Liz wasn't interested in marriage though, and they just lived together so that the kids could have a stable upbringing. By then, Bill was 32 years old, and Liz 30. At first they lived at Barry's Reef near Blackwood where Bill worked as a gold miner.

It wasn't long before Liz was pregnant again, and went back to her family at Mt. Egerton for the birth. The boy arrived in February of 1894, and since she still wasn't married, Liz registered him as illegitimate, father 'unknown'. That was young George's introduction to the world. After the birth Liz and George went back to Barry's Reef again. Despite the way he was registered, young George was always raised as Bill's son.

Liz followed the same procedure in 1896 with 'Joseph, father unknown', and then in 1898, 'Rupert David, father unknown'. Bill had never liked Rupert as a name, so he always called the boy David and that name had caught on. As he grew up, David never used his first name anywhere, and he was always known as Dave.

The big family moved across to Mt. Egerton for a few years, but regular work was hard to come by, and Bill thought about moving to Tasmania. His older brother Joseph already worked there in a mine at Beaconsfield. The Beaconsfield gold mine had been working since 1878, and seemed to offer long term employment that the boys would be able to benefit from as well. They left Liz's eldest boys, James and Tom, living with Liz's mother at Mt Egerton while Liz's only truly legitimate child, eight year old Ellen, went to Tasmania with them. Soon after they arrived in Tasmania, Liz was pregnant again and had her new baby there in 1900. It was a boy, so they named him Tasman, and when he was legitimately registered, Bill was named as his father. They still weren't married, but it was easier that way.

Government administrative procedures were evolving and the public's attitude that 'near enough is good enough' regarding official records, which had applied from the