Can you help us identify Jack?

Jack Lawrence Ambler was born in Murray Bridge on 18 October 1887, the sixth of ten children of Alfred and Mary Ann (nee Amor) Ambler. His family tended to refer to him as Laurie, but he enlisted as Jack Lawrence Ambler. Jack’s father Alfred, was born in 1843 into a railway family in Wolverhampton, England and worked with railway locomotives all his life. He arrived in Australia in about 1875 and worked in various locations around the state until he became locomotive foreman, then district locomotive superintendent at Murray Bridge.

His mother, Mary, was born in 1857 in Watervale in the Clare Valley. She and Alfred had married in 1878. Her parents came to Australia in the mid-1800 from Wiltshire, England and County Galway Ireland. Tragedy struck the Ambler family in 1900 when Jack was 12 years old. Just after the birth of their tenth child, Alfred Ambler was accidentally killed when hit by a shunting locomotive at Murray Bridge Station, leaving Mary Ann to care for the large family:

Jack was employed as a salesman when he enlisted in the military on 8 July 1915. The attestation paper in his file - a ‘certified true copy’ - records his age as 23 years 8 months. In fact, he was 27 years and 8 months. There is no obvious reason for this difference, and it may be that this was just a mistake made in transcribing information from the original. Jack reported to Mitcham Camp to begin training.

He was assigned to the 32nd Battalion when it was formed at Mitcham, South Australia on 9 August 1915. A and B Companies were made up of recruits from South Australia and C and D Companies came from Western Australia. There was much fanfare about this new battalion in South Australia, with gatherings, community support, such as the Cheer-up Society and reviews of the troops by the Premier.

The men from WA who had been at the Blackboy Hill Camp near Perth arrived in Adelaide at the end of September and the whole battalion was assembled at the Cheltenham Racecourse Camp, where training continued. Before leaving, Jack was ‘properly’ farewelled by his family and friends – a theatre party and seeing the opening night of a 15 night run of a J.C. Williamson production, ‘Bought and Paid For’ which had been brought from Melbourne with its full Melbourne cast. Source - AMUSEMENTS. (1915, November 4). The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA 1889 - 1931), p. 10. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8651606

The battalion departed for Egypt on 18 November 1915, with the unit being split between two troop ships HMAT A2 Geelong and HMAT A13 Katuna. Jack was on the Geelong.

As reported in The Adelaide Register:

The 32nd arrived in Suez on 14 December 1915 and moved to El Ferdan just before Christmas. A month later they marched to Ismailia and then to the major camp at Tel-el-Kebir where they stayed for February and most of March. Tel-el-Kebir was about 110 km northeast of Cairo and the 40,000 men in the camp were comprised of Gallipoli veterans and the thousands of reinforcements arriving regularly from Australia. While at Tel-el-Kebir Jack was officially taken on strength with B Company.

Their next stop was at Duntroon Plateau and then at Ferry Post until the end of May where they trained and guarded the Suez Canal. Their last posting in Egypt was a few weeks at Moascar. One soldier’s diary complained of being “sick up to the neck of heat and flies”, of the scarcity of water during their long marches through the sand and he described some of the food as “dog biscuits and bully beef”. He did go on to mention good times as well with swims, mail from home, visiting the local sights and the like.

Source: AWM C2081789 Diary of Theodor Milton PFLAUM 1915-16, page 29, page 12

During their time in Egypt the 32nd had the honour of being inspected by H.R.H. Prince of Wales.

After spending six months in Egypt, the call to support the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front came in mid-June. The 32nd left from Alexandria on the ship Transylvania on 17 June 1916, arriving at Marseilles, France on 23 June 1916 and they then immediately entrained for a three-day train trip to Steenbecque. Their route took them to a station just out of Paris, within sight of the Eiffel Tower, through Boulogne and Calais, with a view of the English Channel, before disembarking and marching to their camp at Morbecque, about 30 kilometres from Fleurbaix.

Theodor Pflaum (No. 327) and Wesley Choat (No. 68) wrote about the trip:

They were headed to the area of Fleurbaix in northern France which was known as the ‘Nursery Sector’ – a supposedly relatively quiet area where inexperienced Allied troops could learn the harsh realities of Western Front trench warfare against the Germans. But the quiet times did not last long. Training continued with a focus on bayonets and the use of gas masks, assuredly with a greater emphasis, given their position near the front. The 32nd moved to the Front on 14 July and Jack was into the trenches for the first time on 16 July, only three weeks after arriving in France.

On the 17th they were reconnoitering the trenches and cutting passages through the barbed wire, preparing for an attack, but it was delayed due to the weather. D Company’s Lieutenant Sam Mills’ letters home were optimistic for the coming battle:

The overall plan was to use brigades from the Australian Fifth Division to conduct a diversionary assault on the German trenches at Fromelles. The 32nd Battalion’s position was on the extreme left flank, with only 100 metres of No Man’s Land to get the German trenches. As they advanced, they were to link up with the 31st Battalion on their right.

However, their position made the job more difficult, as not only did they have to protect themselves while advancing, but they also had to block off the Germans on their left, to stop them from coming around behind them. On the morning of the 18th, A Company and C Company went into the trenches to relieve B and D Companies, who rejoined the next day. The Zero Hour for advancing from their front-line trenches was to be 5.45 PM, but the Germans knew this attack was coming and were well-prepared.

They opened a massive artillery bombardment on the Australians at 5.15 PM, causing chaos and many casualties.The charge over the parapet began at 5.53 PM. A & C company were in the first and second waves to go, Jack’s B Company & D were in the third and fourth. They were successful in the initial assaults and by 6.30 PM were in control of the German’s 1st line system (map Trench B), which was described as “practically a ditch with from 1 to 2 feet of mud and slush at the bottom”.

Source: AWM4 23/49/12, 32nd Battalion War Diaries, July 1916, page 11

Unfortunately, with the success of their attack, ‘friendly’ artillery fire caused a large number of casualties because the artillery observers were unable to confirm the position of the Australian gains. They were able to take out a German machine gun in their early advances, but were being “seriously enfiladed” from their left flank.

By 8.30 PM their left flank had come under heavy bombardment with high explosives and shrapnel. Return bombardment support was provided and the 32nd were told that “the trenches were to be held at all costs”.

Source: AWM4 23/49/12, 32nd Battalion War Diaries, July 1916, page 12

Fighting continued through the night. The Australians made a further charge at the main German line beyond Trench B, but they were low on grenades, there was machine gun fire from behind them from the emplacement at Delangre Farm and they were so far advanced that they were getting shelled by both sides. In the early morning of the 20th, the Germans began a counterattack from the Australian’s left flank, bombing and advancing into Trench A (map).

Given the Australian advances that had been made earlier, the rear Trench E had been left almost empty, which then enabled the Germans to regain that trench and envelop the men of the 32nd. At 5.30 AM the Germans attacked from both flanks in force and with bombing parties. Having only a few grenades left, the only resistance they could offer was with rifles:

What was left of the 32nd had finally withdrawn by 7.30 AM on the 20th. The initial roll call count was devastating – 71 killed, 375 wounded and 219 missing, including Jack. To get some perspective of the battle, when Charles Bean, Australia’s official war historian, attended the battlefield two and half years later, he observed a large quantity of bones, torn uniforms and Australian kit still on the battlefield.

The final impact was that 228 soldiers of the 32nd Battalion were killed or died from wounds sustained at the battle and, of this, 166 were unidentified. Lieutenant Sam Mills survived the battle. In his letters home, he recalls the bravery of the men:

Back in Adelaide, Jack’s family did not know that he had been involved in a deadly battle, or even that he had arrived in France - the last letter they had received from him had been written in Egypt. (Letters from the Western Front took about 6 weeks to arrive in Australia so it is possible that any letters Jack had written from France before Fromelles had not yet arrived in Australia.) But on 13 August, Jack’s mother received a telegram informing her that Jack had been wounded. That was the only thing she was told – there was no information about when or where he was wounded, or the nature or severity of his wounds.

Mary put a notice in Adelaide newspapers informing people of the news she had received in the telegram.

The next day, Mary went to the South Australian Red Cross Information Bureau (SARCIB) on North Terrace, Adelaide, which assisted families in finding information about missing and wounded men. She asked for help in finding out where and when he received his wounds and where he now was. SARCIB contacted Base Records in Melbourne who could provide no further information, but did say that as he ‘was not reported as seriously wounded, and in the absence of further reports favourable progress may be assumed’.

Mrs Ambler was assured that she would ‘be promptly notified upon the receipt of any later reports’.

While the message could be interpreted as a positive one, however, ‘not reported’ more likely meant ‘no information’ … Jack was missing after the battle. So, for the Ambler family it was a time of suspense, waiting and hoping for news. For months there was silence. In October Mrs Ambler again went into the Red Cross and paid for a cable to be sent to Red Cross Commissioners in London seeking further information. Again, the reply was uninformative, regretting that information was meagre, as there had been no report about him other than that he had been wounded.

Source: South Australian Red Cross Information Bureau – Ambler, Jack Lawrence p.10 https://sarcib.ww1.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au

There is a note in Jack’s file which shows that questions were being asked about him. The 32nd Battalion Quartermaster Sergeant Eric Lodge (402) confirmed in September that he had seen Ambler on July 20:

But, there was also a statement that ‘No hospital reports received whatever.’ Another note from January stated that Lodge still believed he had seen Ambler in the ambulance. There is no record of any further communication until April 1917 when Mary was notified that her son was now officially ‘wounded and missing’. Although this would not have been a surprise to her, it was official recognition of what she knew, and she reported the new information in the newspaper.

By now, they must have expected the worst. But as long as there was no confirmation, the anxiety, the suspense and the ‘what-ifs’ remained. In May, and again in June, Mrs Ambler placed an advertisement in Adelaide newspapers.

Jack’s brother, engineer Albert (16753), had enlisted on 10 June 1916, but did not leave Australia until 10 February, 1917 and would have been at sea when the above notice appeared while he was on active duty with the 1st Australian General Hospital. In August he wrote to the Australian Red Cross in Sydney seeking information about his brother:

However, by the time Albert’s letter was written, a Court of Enquiry convened by the Commanding Officer of the 32nd Battalion had determined that Jack, along with all other missing men from the battalion who had been listed as missing since Fromelles, were to be officially pronounced Killed in Action. In September 1917, the family was informed, and Mary sadly announced this in Adelaide newspapers.

In October, when Jack would have had his 30th birthday, his sisters remembered him in the ‘Heroes of the Great War’ newspaper column:

Like many other families, Mary longed to receive any of the belongings of her son, something tangible to remember him by. In March 1918, she wrote to Base Records in Melbourne asking if “you have any belongings come to hand for my Son”. She received a formal acknowledgement which ‘regrettably’ advised it was unlikely that any belongings would be returned to her.

Also, like other families, the Amblers were provided with no further information by the military. By word of mouth from returned soldiers and soldiers’ families they would have learnt that he had died at Fleurbaix (as the men who fought at Fromelles called the battle). This is all they could tell the military in 1921 when they were requested to supply any information which might help in the recovery of his remains.

Source NAA: B2455, AMBLER, Jack – First AIF Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920, page 27

The Ambler family went to their own graves not knowing where Jack lay. Jack Lawrence Ambler is commemorated on V.C. Corner (Panel No 4), Australian Cemetery Memorial, Fromelles, France. He posthumously received the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, and the Victory Medal.

After the battle, the Germans recovered 250 Australian soldiers and placed them in a burial pit at Pheasant Wood. This grave was discovered in 2008 and since then efforts have been underway to identify these soldiers by DNA testing from family members. As of 2024, 180 of the soldiers have been identified, including 41 of the 166 unidentified soldiers from the 32nd Battalion.

We welcome all branches of Jack’s family to come forward to donate DNA to help with his identification. If you know anything of family contacts, please contact the Fromelles Association. We hope that one day Jack will be named and honoured with a known grave.

Please visit Fromelles.info to follow the ongoing identification project and Jack’s story.