By September 1917, Charlie’s company had moved north into Belgium to join the fighting around Ypres. The British and Commonwealth armies were several months into the Third Battle of Ypres, a major offensive intended to push the German army back from the high ground east of the city. Earlier attacks had become bogged down in rain, mud and fierce German resistance, but the next phase would use a more limited approach: capture a relatively shallow stretch of ground, consolidate it, and use artillery and machine-gun fire to break up the inevitable counterattacks before moving forward again.

The next attack was planned for 20 September at Menin Road. In the days beforehand, the 21st Machine Gun Company moved men, guns and enormous quantities of ammunition forward into prepared positions from which its Vickers guns could support the infantry advance. On the evening of 19 September the company began moving into the line through congested roads, wet ground and almost complete darkness. Shelling had already damaged many of the prepared gun positions, and telephone cables laid to the machine-gun batteries — groups of Vickers guns organised to fire together — were repeatedly disrupted. It took until about 4am to get the sections into position [30].

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Zero Hour — the predetermined moment at which the attack was to begin — was set for 5.40am. At that instant the artillery barrage opened and the Australian infantry began its advance. The 21st's machine guns supported them with planned barrage fire and, as captured ground was consolidated, switched to pre-arranged S.O.S. lines. These were defensive firing lines plotted in advance: if German troops began a counterattack, the front line could send up an S.O.S. signal, usually a flare, and the machine guns would immediately open fire on the designated area to try to break up the attack before it reached the newly won positions [30].

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The fighting continued throughout the day and into the following night. The company suffered heavily: five men were killed, at least nineteen wounded and several guns and tripods put out of action. On 21 September alone, the 21st's guns fired around 60,000 rounds [30].

There was little opportunity to recover. Only days later, on 26 September, the company was back in action during the Battle of Polygon Wood, again firing in support of the Australian advance and then helping to break up German counterattacks. Between 25 and 28 September the 21st's guns expended approximately 162,000 rounds. Keeping them supplied required a constant flow of ammunition forward through ground that was being shelled with both high explosive and gas. The diary records pack mules carrying ammunition to the gun positions and, during one S.O.S. call, men having to carry fresh ammunition up to every gun while the fighting was still underway. For Charlie, his experience of the battle was as much along the supply routes behind the guns as at the gun positions themselves. During the Polygon Wood fighting, the diary records ammunition being carried up to every gun while an S.O.S. barrage was still in progress. Charlie would have been working within that constant flow of men, animals, limbers and ammunition, hauling supplies along roads and tracks under shellfire and gas attack so that the guns could keep firing [30]. 

 

By the time the 21st was pulled out on 28 September, the effects of the previous days were impossible to miss. The war diary noted simply that “the majority were shaken”, and that several men were suffering from the effects of gas. Before they could properly rest, those who had not already done so were told to make out their wills. Then came the ordinary business of recovery: the men were sent for baths, cleaned up and prepared to carry on [30]. 

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There was little time to recover. The success at Menin Road and Polygon Wood had encouraged the British command to continue the same method of limited advances east of Ypres: take a relatively shallow objective, consolidate it, and use artillery and machine-gun fire to smash the German counterattacks that followed. The next step was the Battle of Broodseinde on 4 October 1917, an attempt to seize more of the high ground along the ridge towards Passchendaele. For Charlie and the 21st, that meant preparing for yet another enormous machine-gun barrage only days after coming out of the previous fighting. 

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Before dawn on 4 October, six of the company’s Vickers guns were in position south of Albania Wood. At Zero Hour, the guns started a carefully timed creeping barrage, lifting their fire gradually ahead of the advancing infantry. They kept it up for almost five hours, firing around 212,000 rounds, before the guns were cleaned, reset and moved to new positions. Later that day, and over the days that followed, they were called on again to fire defensive S.O.S. barrages as German troops tried to counterattack [31].

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​After Broodseinde, the company was finally withdrawn from the line on 8 October to Café Belge and, on 13 October, they moved to the Red Horse Shoe Camp for a short period of rest, equipment repair and reorganisation. On 14 October 1917, Charlie was appointed Lance Corporal. The service record gives no reason for the appointment, but it came after months of front-line service and only days after the intense fighting at Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde [8] [31].

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The company remained at the Camp but preparations were already underway to return to the forward area as the battle around Passchendaele continued [31].

By 22 October, the 21st Machine Gun Company returned to the forward area around Zonnebeke and the Ypres–Roulers railway during the final stages of the Passchendaele campaign. Enemy artillery and gas shelling were frequent. On 29 October alone, 26,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition were carried forward to the company’s two batteries. Two officers were killed when a shell struck their dugout, and on 31 October another shell burst in the entrance to Company Headquarters, seriously wounding the commanding officer [31].

 

During the night of 1 November gas shelling was so extensive that the men had to wear their Small Box Respirators for much of the night. When the company was relieved the following day, two men were subsequently evacuated suffering from the effects of gas [32].

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The 21st was finally relieved from the front line on 2 November. After several days in the rear, the whole 1st Australian Division - including the 21st - began withdrawing from the Ypres sector on 8 November, and Charlie’s company marched out the following day [32].

 

After the withdrawal from Ypres, the 21st spent several weeks resting and retraining in France. Life settled back into a rigid routine, with parades at 9am and 2pm most days. Some were general inspections, but many were directly connected with the company’s transport work: washing and cleaning limbers, practising how to pack and unpack them, checking their mechanisms and stoppages, and drilling in the handling and filling of ammunition belts. For Charlie, the parades reflected the everyday side of being a driver — caring for the transport, keeping the limbers serviceable and making sure that, when the company was ordered back into action, its guns and ammunition could move with it [32].

In December the company returned to Belgium. By then the major offensives around Ypres had largely run their course and both sides were settling into a more static winter phase, holding and strengthening the positions won during the autumn. The pace of fighting was quieter than it had been during the Ypres battles, but the front was by no means peaceful. Charlie’s company was again in the line, and throughout December 1917 and January 1918 they carried out routine defensive duties, such as firing at enemy positions they could not see directly by using calculated ranges and map references, and keeping guns ready for anti-aircraft work when required [33].

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On 30 January 1918, the 21st were finally relieved and pulled back to billets at Locrehof Farm, near the village of Locre (modern-day Loker) in West Flanders, Belgium [46]. 

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On 3 February 1918, while the company was at Locrehof Farm, Charlie wrote an embroidered postcard to his half-sister Dorothy Beasley (known as Dorrie):

 

“we are having some good wether here now it is not to cold and it as knocked off raining for a wile… I see in the paper the other day where Mackay is all under water…”

 

Despite everything Charlie had experienced during the preceding year, his surviving letter makes almost no reference to the war itself. Instead he wrote about the weather, flooding at home and family news, before assuring Dorrie that he was well and signing off with love.

Only two days later, on 5 February, Charlie was admitted sick with synovitis of his left knee. He passed through a series of field medical units before being admitted to No. 24 General Hospital at Étaples with P.U.O. — pyrexia of unknown origin, or unexplained fever. This diagnosis was often associated with illnesses such as trench fever during the First World War [8].

Charlie remained away from his unit for nearly three months. During his absence, the 21st Machine Gun Company became part of the newly formed 1st Australian Machine Gun Battalion [8].

He finally rejoined the battalion in the field on 26 April 1918, during the closing stages of the German Spring Offensive in Flanders [8]. 

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Charlie's return came in the middle of a very different kind of battle for his unit. Earlier that month the German army had launched a major offensive in Flanders, driving west towards Hazebrouck, one of the most important railway junctions behind the British front. The railways running through the town formed part of the network linking the armies in Flanders with the Channel ports, through which Britain sent troops, ammunition, food and other supplies into France. If Hazebrouck fell, the Germans could disrupt that flow, make it much harder for the Allies to reinforce and supply their troops around Ypres, as well as bringing the Channel ports themselves increasingly under threat. Holding the town was therefore about much more than defending one place: it was about keeping the northern British army connected to the supply system that allowed it to keep fighting [48].

 

The 1st Australian Division, including Charlie's new unit of the 1st Australian Machine Gun Battalion, had been hurried north to help block the advance and was now holding a defensive line in the countryside around Strazeele, Fletre and Rouge Croix, directly in the path of any renewed German push [49]. 

 

The 1st Machine Gun Battalion specifically was holding positions around Rouge Croix. The sector was anything but quiet. The day before Charlie's arrival, more than 3,000 gas shells had fallen on nearby Fletre, causing over thirty casualties, and both Allied and German artillery remained extremely active. The company was already preparing for the possibility of another German breakthrough: mobile machine-gun sections were kept ready to move at short notice, their guns and ammunition carried on horse-drawn fighting limbers so that they could be sent wherever the line was threatened [49].

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On the night of 28 April, the men could hear an immense bombardment developing towards Kemmel. At times the artillery fire became an intense drumfire and continued through the night into the early morning. The following day the Germans launched another major attack across the front from Mont Noir towards Zillebeke, including the fighting around Scherpenberg. From its position further west, the 1st received reports that, apart from one area, the Germans were driven back with heavy losses [49].

Even after the attack had been repulsed, the threat was taken seriously. On 30 April senior officers from Charlie’s battalion reconnoitred villages behind the front — including Strazeele, Pradelles, Rouge Croix, Fletre and Borre — looking for houses that could be strengthened and converted into machine-gun strongpoints in case the Germans broke through the main defensive line. The immediate crisis was beginning to ease, but the battalion was still preparing for the possibility that the enemy advance might resume [49].

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Through May and June, and into July, the immediate danger of a German breakthrough gradually receded. Charlie’s battalion remained in the Flanders sector, reconnoitring defensive positions, maintaining the line and preparing in case the offensive resumed. As the summer progressed, however, the Australians began taking the initiative themselves, using patrols, raids and limited attacks to push the German positions back piece by piece [50].

 

One of the key positions in front of them was Merris, a village only a few miles from Hazebrouck which had become part of the German front line. Australian troops had already been pressing closer to the village during June and July, and at the end of the month the 10th Australian Battalion was ordered to capture it. Rather than attack straight through the village, the plan was to move around it from both sides, encircle the German defenders and establish a new line beyond it. Machine guns and artillery would provide a protective curtain of fire along the flanks of the advancing infantry [50] [51]. 

The attack began shortly after midnight on 30 July 1918. Charlie’s company formed the left-hand part of the machine-gun barrage. Its guns opened fire before dawn. Thick mist made it difficult to see how the attack was progressing, so the barrage was repeated in bursts: ten minutes of rapid fire every half-hour until 9.30am. When the 10th Australian Battalion called for the original barrage to be put down again, they opened up their guns once more. By the end of the operation Charlie’s company had fired around 110,000 rounds, in addition to its normal programme of harassing fire [50].

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Those 110,000 rounds did not arrive at the guns all at once. As the barrage continued through the night and morning, Charlie and the other drivers had to keep ammunition moving from the transport lines, where the company’s horses, limbers and supplies were based, towards the gun positions, replenishing what the Vickers guns were consuming. That meant repeated journeys bringing fresh ammunition closer to the batteries as the firing continued.

 

The attack was a striking success. The Australian infantry encircled Merris within a remarkably short time, captured the village and straightened the front line, taking large numbers of German prisoners for comparatively light Australian losses. The expected German counterattack never properly developed — although supporting artillery and machine guns were kept ready to meet it  — as the German forces in the area were too badly disrupted to mount a serious attempt to retake the village [50].

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The fighting around Merris was one of Charlie’s last major actions at the front. In the days that followed, the company settled back into the familiar routine of defensive duties and preparation. Then, on 4 August 1918, Charlie made an unusual choice of his own: after serving as a Lance Corporal since the previous October, he voluntarily gave up the appointment and returned to the rank of Private. His service record does not explain why [8].

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Three days later, on 7 August, he began a period of leave in Britain. He returned to the battalion on 25 August, but only four days later was admitted to hospital suffering from urethritis associated with gonorrhoea. He would never return to front-line service [8].

Charlie remained within the military hospital system for the rest of the war. While he was receiving treatment, the Allies began the great offensive that would bring the fighting on the Western Front to an end. Beginning with the Battle of Amiens in August, they pushed the German army steadily eastwards, through the Somme fighting and back towards the Hindenburg Line. The line was finally broken at the end of September, leaving Germany’s military position increasingly untenable and helping bring about the Armistice on 11 November 1918 [34]. 

 

After 97 days of treatment in France, Charlie briefly returned to the Machine Gun Base Depot, but was admitted sick again and evacuated to England in December 1918. He received further periods of treatment at the 1st Australian Dermatological Hospital at Bulford until March 1919 [8].

On 20 April 1919, Charlie finally embarked for Australia aboard the Boonah. He reached Melbourne on 8 June and Sydney on 11 June before returning to Queensland, where he was formally discharged from the Australian Imperial Force on 22 July 1919. [8].

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Charlie returned home to Farleigh. Sadly, he was not home long before his mother, Lena, died during the influenza pandemic, her death attributed to pneumonia and heart failure [35].