The Chipilly Six: Unsung Heroes of the Great War

​In war, what are the traits that make a man a hero?

Who decides that the hero receives the proper recognition and rewards for his actions?

What happens to him when the guns fall silent and life returns to normal?
 
These questions and their answers lie at the heart of this story about six remarkable men who deserve to be better known – certainly by all Australians. Single-handedly, and displaying enormous initiative and courage, they turned events in the favour of the Allies during the second Battle of the Somme.

Historian Lucas Jordan has finally brought their truth to light.
 
On 9 August, 1918, two sergeants of the First Australian Infantry Battalion, Jake Hayes and Harold Andrews, were AWOL. Like many other diggers, they were inveterate souvenir hunters and had crossed the Somme in search of treasures.

In their rear, the British had been fighting to take a ridge called Chipilly Spur for nearly three days. Around 2,000 British soldiers had already been gunned down by Germans holding the Spur.

From their observations, Hayes and Andrews thought the frontal assault was a waste of time. They returned from their expedition and sought permission to surreptitiously tackle the Spur.

Hayes and Andrews chose just four volunteers from their Battalion - good mates, Jerry Fuller and Billy Kane, and two stretcher bearers, George Stevens and Richard “Dick” Turpin, who volunteered as riflemen.

Bandoliers slung over their shoulders and bombs in their pockets, they crept out, surprising and blasting the Germans in their dugouts and charging them with bayonets. They captured nine machine guns and 71 German prisoners. The Chipilly Spur was wide open and the British could advance.

The six were never properly acknowledged for their efforts. Even Australia’s senior commander, Sir John Monash, had the facts wrong, giving credit to an American regiment and another Australian brigade, ignoring the six completely.
 
The terms “larrikin” and “rogue heroes” certainly apply to all of them and that all survived in the face of unimaginable danger is beyond astonishing. Wounded, or struck down with illnesses, they were patched up and sent back to the fray over and over again. Jack Hayes was not expected to survive when severely wounded at Froissy just two weeks after the Spur and left to die. Miraculously, he survived and went on to be a dedicated member of the returned services leagues that would help ex-soldiers in the years to come. He is also one of the men behind the creation of the Anzac Day dawn services that are now an intrinsic part of Australian life.
 
Returning to Australia, some of the men were caught up in the Spanish Flu epidemic and quarantined in appalling conditions. Bitter domestic politics and issues with trade unions permeated post-war Australian life. Life was always tough, there was always a struggle with money. The Great Depression made things so much worse. All of the six married and had families. They worked hard, as labourers, on the railways, cutting timber, making roads.
 
It was only later in life they would realise the mistake they had made in their “she’ll be right, mate” attitude when declining pensions for their war service. At the time, they were young working-class men who’d come through baptisms of fire and were determined to provide for themselves and their families without hand-outs. It was only as they aged and their physical and mental wounds started acting up that they discovered the government refused to help them because they’d said no to those pensions twenty or thirty years before. What an indictment, considering what these men did for their country, both in war and peace.
 
Enthralling and sobering reading for anyone interested in little-known stories of World War I but also Australian social history of the mid-20th Century.
 
Four-and-a-half stars

New South Books

amazon.com.au

amazon.co.uk
 
(Note: for anyone interested in genetic traits as to what makes an adventurous Aussie “larrikin”, the leading sergeant Jack Hayes, was a descendant of an aristocratic convict sent to New South Wales, the notorious and irrepressible Sir Henry Browne Hayes, who kidnapped an heiress and was transported for his crime. During his twelve-year sentence, he established the estate of Vaucluse in Sydney which he surrounded with a trench filled with imported Irish turf in order to keep out snakes! A continuous thorn in the side of the authorities, he was also involved in an abortive Irish convict rebellion. After his release and on his return voyage, he managed to escape a shipwreck on the Falkland Islands.)
 

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