#2687 Private Ernest James Holland
14TH BATTALION, AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY FORCE
ON 4TH AUGUST THE AUSTRALIANS went forward again and this time, with adequate time to prepare, they finally conquered the OG Lines. When the 2nd Australian Division was subsequently relieved on the 6th, they had suffered almost 7,000 casualties to be able to lay claim to the crest of the ridge beyond Pozières, They had secured for Gough’s army a view over Courcelette and Martinpuich, beyond the German second line out toward Bapaume 5 miles away, but now the time had come for yet another group of their countrymen to be fed into the battle.
From Victoria, Ernest Holland enlisted at 33 and, leaving a wife and newborn son behind, sailed from Melbourne in August 1915. A veteran volunteer who had also served in South Africa, Ernest was in Gallipoli by the end of the year and shortly before Christmas was another of the high number of troops being evacuated sick to Egypt. He suffered multiple minor illnesses before his battalion was sent to the more friendly climate of France on the Cunard liner SS Transylvania, landing in Marseilles in June 1916.
Approaching Pozières with the 14th Battalion, Ernest marched up in bad light, guns raging beyond, cutting the Australian lines to pieces. The relief was so confusing that, although the men thought they were occupying a supporting position, they were actually in the front line. New to the trenches, there was no chance for Ernest and the rest of his battalion to settle in. Before dawn on 7th August the Germans counter-attacked. Shortly after 4am the enemy came at him and his companions in force. They overran confused Australians unfamiliar with their surroundings, who were sitting in their own old positions, and moved on to try to take back Pozières. A British barrage managed to disperse the supporting German troops assembling behind the first wave and, after some desperate hand-to-hand fighting, the scrap ended in a complete victory over the opposing troops who had advanced up to that point.
Pozières (as it appeared to the Australians on their arrival in July 1916). (Authors’ collection)
This was the to be last counter-attack made on Pozières by the Germans, but despite having helped to fight off the enemy, Ernest Holland had become one of the thousands of men consumed by the Somme battlefield seemingly without a trace left behind. In 1922, his wife was still hopeful that there might be some news of his final resting place, asking for photographs of his grave. The military authorities were sympathetic but, as they explained, exhaustive efforts had been made to find the remains of those still on the battlefield. ‘It must reluctantly be concluded that the Grave Registration Units have not succeeded in locating the [soldier].’ In this instance, Lizzie Holland was told that it was the intention of the authorities to erect a memorial to those with no known grave. She was then left, a young widow and mother, to attempt to rebuild her life.
When the Villers Bretonneux Memorial to the missing Australian contingent was unveiled by George VI in 1938, however, Ernest Holland was not on it. Two years previously an anonymous grave had been found near Pozières containing two men. Clothing, boots and titles revealed that they were Australian, and one was named as an officer of a machine-gun regiment by his leather identification tags. The tags belonging to the other were illegible, but he had on him a pocket book with a clasp engraved with the letters ‘EJH’. A search was begun to find Ernest Holland’s widow.
In November 1936, Lizzie, by now remarried and living in Tasmania, received a letter informing her that the Imperial War Graves Commission had finally found her first husband near Pozières. He had been carefully exhumed for reburial, and his new grave would have a fitting headstone placed over it. More than twenty years after his death, Ernest Holland was finally laid to rest at Sucrerie Military Cemetery, plot I.JJ.20.