Benjamin Cross

Following item is from the Australian War Memorial and was submitted by Ian Lang Ben Cross attended the Brisbane recruiting depot on 31st August 1915. He gave his age as 34 years and stated his occupation as teamster. Mates of Ben from the 25th Battalion described him as a tall raw boned fellow. He was 6’ tall and a photograph of his brother , Thomas, held in the War Memorial’s collection bears a striking resemblance to Ben. He named his brother James, who also lived at “Crossville” as his next of kin. On 12 April 1916, Ben and the other recruits who made up the 12th reinforcements for the 25th Battalion boarded a train for Sydney where they boarded the “Moultan.” The embarkation roll shows Ben had allocated 3/- of his daily pay to an account in Esk. The recruits landed at Portsmouth in June 1916 and marched into a training battalion camp on Salisbury Plain. On 1st July, the Battle of the Somme began in France. As the lines of men from Kitchener’s New Army marched across the fields towards the German guns, they were cut down in their thousands. By the end of July, two of the four divisions of Australians which had recently arrived in France from Egypt were also put into the battle; at Pozieres. The 25th Battalion, the unit that Ben would eventually join, was smashed at Pozieres suffering enormous casualties of killed, missing and wounded. When the battalion was finally taken out of the line, it was in desperate need of reinforcements. Ben was posted to France from England in September 1916 and was taken on strength by the 25th on 28th September, joining “B” Company. By the time Ben joined his battalion, the 25th had been shifted from the Somme north to a rest area around Poperinghe in Belgium. In early October, the rest was over and the battalion went into the line at Ypres, mainly engaged in fatigue work. On the first of November, the 25th marched to a railway station to board a train for France; they were going back to the Somme. With the coming of winter to the Western Front, the supreme British Commander Douglas Haig ordered the front to be closed up. However he still wanted small contained offensive actions, more to appease his French allies than to gain any strategic advantage. One such action was against a series of enemy trenches on the heights above Bapaume at Flers. The plan called for one company from each of the 7th Brigade battalions to attack a spot named the Maze under an artillery barrage. The saps leading to the jumping off tapes were knee deep in mud, the temperature was well below zero and the men were laden down with rations, grenades, sand bags, tools, water and ammunition. Zero hour was set for 4:00am on 5th November but the conditions meant that some companies, including “B” Company of the 25th, did not make it to the start line until five hours later, by which time it was light enough for the enemy to clearly observe the build-up. In a sheer stoke of stupidity, the British ordered the attack to go ahead. 100 men from “B” Coy of the 25th advanced towards the Maze. Of those who set off, 77 were either killed or wounded. When the company roll was called, Ben Cross was missing. Two days later, the Germans retook the section of the Maze that the Australians had briefly occupied. Many of those Australians killed, whether buried or not, were then behind German lines. Curiously, Ben’s brother Jim received a telegram in Linville advising that Ben was wounded. His file records that he was wounded and missing. Neither of these were correct. A court of inquiry conducted by the 25th in July of 1917, which looked into a number of missing cases from as far back as Pozieres, determined that Ben Cross had been killed in action on 5th November 1916. Enquiries instigated by the family, mainly a brother, G. Cross of Ruddington, revealed a number of witnesses who saw Ben fall or who saw where he was buried on the battlefield. One witness who was beside “Bob” (as he called him) said he was hit by a shell and killed outright. Remarkably this temporary grave remained sufficiently intact for the Imperial War Graves Commission to identify his remains which were reinterred in the Warlancourt British Cemetery in 1922. To commemorate the sacrifice of Ben Cross and the other seven men from Linville who paid the supreme sacrifice, Ben’s younger brother Tom designed a war memorial to be erected in Linville. Tom was a photographer and postcard artist. Frank and Jim Cross, Ben’s brothers constructed the memorial, much of which utilises local timber. The Queensland War Trophies Committee allocated a German Maxim machine gun which had been captured by the 9th Battalion to be incorporated in the memorial which was unveiled sometime in the early 1920’s. Ben’s service medals and the memorial plaque was sent to his eldest brother, Mr G Cross of Bowen.

He is buried at Warlencourt British Cemetery additional information Peter Gillings