#4154 Private Horace William James Callaghan
9TH BATTALION, AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY FORCE
HORACE CALLAGHAN’S FATHER JAMES WAS from Salop, but had emigrated to Australia looking for work in the 1880s. Horace was his fourth son and one of nine children, born in Lithgow, New South Wales. At the age of 18, having worked as a grocer’s assistant and a driver, he had attempted to sign up to go and fight in Europe but had been rejected on account of his age. Still determined, Horace then went off to Longreach, in the middle of Queensland, and found a more lenient recruiting office.
All that the authorities near Brisbane required was that his parents telegraph their permission through to the camp, and this they duly did, so that Horace became the first of his family to join the army. In January 1916 he set sail on a lengthy journey to Alexandria. From there Horace went on to Marseilles before travelling through France to Étaples, joining the 9th Battalion of the Australian Infantry Force at the end of May. Acclimatising to the Western Front was not all that some of the Australians had hoped. Those who had seen Gallipoli ‘had dreams of again sleeping between sheets and breakfasting with linen tablecloths’ in the civilisation of Europe. When they reached the promised land what they got was ‘fifty men in a batch, through a muddy farmyard containing a vast pit of manure, into an ancient barn with a leaky tiled roof and cracked walls of timber and daubed mud, left to sleep there on the ground, in the hay-loft, amid the crowded rat holes, the shock was a sharp one’. Some of the battalion’s first experiences in their new theatre of war were of trench raids, the likes of which were unknown in the Dardanelles. They were learning quickly that the Germans appeared to be a meticulous and determined foe.
On 3rd July the troops at the northern end of the battlefield had been made independent of Rawlinson and designated the Reserve Army, under General Hubert Gough. By the 14th, several divisions of Australians and one of New Zealanders were concentrated on the Somme. Selected men immediately began visiting the front lines 25 miles to the east. It was all new to Horace, and to the men who had served at Gallipoli too, for they heard terrible tales of the ‘barrage’ – fierce artillery bombardments that as yet they could only imagine.
A composite photograph of privates Horace (rear) and Stanley (right) Callaghan with their brothers. (Private collection)
Thompsons Paddock Camp in Queensland. (Private collection)
On 23rd July there was to be a concerted effort made at capturing key objectives at High Wood, Longueval, Delville Wood and the village of Guillemont to the east of Trônes Wood. Standing on a ridge in about the middle of the Somme battlefield, the village of Pozières comprised a fiercely defended outpost to the original German second system and another target. After the success of 14th July around Bazentin, higher command was keen to make progress further north and capturing Pozières would be vital to this plan. Pushing the enemy away from here and Ovillers, which had fallen on 16th July, would enable guns to be moved up to better ground and, if they could take the line just beyond Pozières, Gough could cut off German observation on the ridge and take it for themselves. Small attacks on the village had, as was becoming standard on the Somme, proved to be costly failures so far. They were repeated nonetheless, gradually reducing Pozières to rubble. Now it had been ordained that on 23rd July, Australian troops, including Horace Callaghan, would launch themselves at this position in a forceful attack as part of the wider offensive.
The Australians had been creeping ever nearer to the battlefield in preparation for their first action on the Western Front, or in Horace’s case, their first experience of battle at all. Now they were instructed that just after midnight on the 23rd they would first assault enemy trenches in front of the Pozières. The second phase of their night action would look to seize the village itself. Beyond that was a third objective, formidable trenches known as the ‘OG Lines’.
The 9th Australian Infantry went into British lines in front of the village a few days before the battle, finding the area liable to sweeping shellfire and ‘literally choked with dead bodies, British and German’. The preliminary bombardment started on the 19th, hurling tear gas and phosgene towards the enemy troops huddled in Pozières for three days. Then it was the turn of the infantry to attack.
After being shelled in his assembly position, Horace Callaghan crept into no-man’s-land in the middle of the night and deployed alongside the rest of his Queensland Battalion on lines of tape. For the first time the Australians watched the full horror of a Western Front barrage increase in ferocity to pave the way for their advance. Deafened, when it lifted they rushed through the darkness into action towards the trenches blocking them from Pozières. Only on Horace’s front did they meet determined resistance, but the Australians battled on.
Within half an hour, they began clambering into the village, through abandoned back gardens. The Germans were retreating to the other end of Pozières. Supporting battalions came up, prisoners were taken, but here the Australian advance was checked. The OG Lines proved a far harder prospect.
At 5:30am an enemy counter-attack was launched. Although it was repulsed, the Germans put up a stout resistance at OG1 and OG2, with troops hiding in dugouts and manning machine-gun nests. Here the darkness had hampered the advancing Australians. The artillery barrage had ruined the ground and made it difficult to ascertain where they were. The best that they could do for the time being was secure their position back in the village. When daylight came the only gain as part of the third objective had been in a part of OG1.
Horace Callaghan was declared missing on 23rd July. Back home in New South Wales, his father began writing frantic letters looking for news of his boy. On 28th August he penned one in anger to the authorities, frustrated at a lack of communication. ‘Whatever has happened,’ he argued, ‘the boy in question, and his two brothers, also serving, are simply fulfilling their obligations to their country. But there are also obligations due to them, and their relatives … It appears to me that the knowledge that somewhere, something is being done, and its nature is due to myself.’ All Mr Callaghan wanted was a reassurance that someone in France was concerned with finding out what had happened to his son. ‘Now Sir, we all have our cross to bear in connection with this disastrous, but necessary war and the information sought would considerably lighten my load. I remain yours, for Australia.’
James Callaghan’s sad torment was being mirrored in tens of thousands of homes worldwide since the advent of the Somme campaign. No trace of 19-year-old Horace Callaghan was ever discovered. Rather than the Thiepval Memorial, a separate monument stands at Villers-Bretonneux near Amiens for Australian servicemen who fell on the Western Front and have no known grave. Horace’s body, if recovered, was never identified and he is one of 10,738 of his countrymen commemorated on this memorial.