The critical events that took place on the Western Front leading up to the Armistice of World War I are not as well known as those of Gallipoli, but Australia Post is hoping to change that with its new set of five commemorative stamps.
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The poignant images from 100 years ago each highlight a different aspect of Australia’s role in the final months of the war.
Featured are street parade scenes, families awaiting the return of their loved ones; French children placing flowers on graves of Australian soldiers at Villers-Bretonneaux; soldiers preparing for the battle of Amiens and the legendary military commander who led the Australian Corps in the war's dying days, Lieutenant-General John Monash.
A Bellingen-born soldier, Private William Hackman, was involved in the campaigns at Amiens and Villers-Bretonneaux that helped swing the war in favour of the Allies.
He is one of the 62,000 Australians who died while serving in the First World War, and on the anniversary of his death in May this year, his story was related in a special ceremony at the Australian War Memorial.
Every afternoon, the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told during the Last Post Ceremony by the Pool of Reflection.
Private William Hackman, 55th Battalion, First World War, was commemorated on May 12 as follows:
William Hackman was born in 1890, the youngest son of the seven children born to Henry and Mary Hackman of Bellingen on the New South Wales mid-north coast. Henry Hackman was a merchant sea captain who drowned the year after William was born when his schooner capsized off Nambucca Heads. Mary Hackman remarried two years later. William spent his formative years in Bellingen, where he attended school and afterwards worked as a farmer. On the eve of the First World War, he moved with his mother to Croydon in Sydney, where it is likely he earned a living at the nearby farmers’ markets.
William enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in November 1916. After several weeks’ training at the military camp at the Sydney Showgrounds, he embarked for England with a reinforcement group for the 55th Battalion. After further training on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, William sailed for the battlefields of the Western Front in October 1917, and joined the battalion in camp at Dickenbusch near Ypres in Belgium, as it rested after heavy fighting during the Third Battle of Ypres.
The 55th Battalion remained in Belgium until March 1918, when the Australians were rushed south to help defend the city of Amiens against the Germans breakthrough on the Somme. If Amiens fell, the Germans would control the main support and logistical hub for the British and French armies in northern France, and could press on towards the coast. The 55th Battalion was sent to Villers-Bretonneux where it was held in reserve during the famous assault on the night of the 24th to the 25th of April 1918. By then the line had been stabilised, Amiens was no longer threatened, and the Australians had dug-in on their newly-won positions.
Throughout the following weeks the 55th Battalion remained in the area, where it was frequently subjected to German artillery bombardments. One of these occurred on the morning of 11 May 1918, after the battalion had intercepted a German wireless signal that the guns were about to fire. Although the battalion was prepared, the bombardment resulted in two casualties.
William Hackman was killed outright by a high-explosive shell. Aged 28 at the time of his death, he was buried at the nearby Daours Communal Cemetery Extension. His grieving mother included the following epitaph to him in the local newspaper several weeks later: “Greater love hath no man”.
Janene Carey
Janene Carey is the senior journalist for the Bellingen Shire Courier-Sun
Janene Carey is the senior journalist for the Bellingen Shire Courier-Sun
