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Herbert John Westmoreland was born at home - Vernon St, Norwood, Adelaide, South Australia - on 24 August 1885 to John and Harriet (nee Pearson). He was the only son of their six children. He had a twin sister, Charlotte Elizabeth (Lizzie) and four other sisters – Mary (died young), Catherine, Nellie and Harriet (jnr). His twin sister Lizzie died in 1911.

Herb’s English-born father, John, was a bootmaker and in 1900, the family moved to Broken Hill. Harriet, born in South Australia, died in New South Wales in 1905, aged 57; she is buried in Broken Hill. The family moved to Melbourne where John established the Westmoreland Boot Lace Co, which still existed in 1951. Herbert, as the only son, worked at the factory.

Of Herbert’s five sisters, the eldest, Mary 1870-75, died young and the youngest, Harriet 1888-1923, did not marry. The three middle sisters married and raised families:

John Westmoreland married twice more after the death of his wife, Harriet, but he had no further children.

Herb, aged 29, enlisted on 10 July 1915 in Melbourne and was assigned to the third platoon in A Company in the newly formed 29th Battalion. Having enlisted as part of the recruitment drive that followed the landing at Gallipoli, and having seen the casualty lists, these were men who had offered themselves in full knowledge of their potential fate.

After a short period of training in Victoria, the 29th left Australia on 10 November 1915 on the HMAT A11 Ascanius .

They arrived in Suez, Egypt, disembarking on 7 December. Training and defence of the Suez Canal continued until mid-June with postings at Ismailia, Tel el Kebir, Ferry Post and Moascar. While in Tel el Kebir in March 1916, the troops were reviewed by the Prince of Wales.

The call to the Western front came in mid-June 1916. On the 16th they boarded the troop ship Tunisian in Alexandria, heading to Marseilles, arriving there on the 23rd. Their arrival was well received with French citizens lining the streets to welcome the troops.

The Battalion took the train to Hazebrouck and on to Steenbecque and by the 26th were encamped in Morbeque, about 30 kilometres from Fleurbaix.

On 1 July they moved back to Hazebrouck where training included the use of gas masks for the possible use of “lachrymatory shells” – tear gas. Training was tough. One day included a march of sixteen miles carrying 75 pounds of kit, which only the youngest and fittest could complete - although Private James Lang (858) of Glengarry Victoria described it somewhat light-heartedly in his letter home:

On July 9th they moved to Erquingham, just outside of Fleurbaix and on the 10th they got their first experience in the frontline trenches but returned to Fleurbaix on 14 July. Preparations for an attack continued and on 19 July, Herbert was in the trenches with his A company, ready for battle. The 8th Brigade’s position was on the left side of the 5th Division, in the Cellar Farm area (see map below).

By 8pm, the soldiers were ready, with A and D Companies in the front trenches. Many of the men broke through the forward lines of German trenches looking for what they had been told was a second line. Instead, all they found were a series of shallow drainage ditches.

At 2am the German counterattack began, but as noted in the War Diaries, “After a struggle, Germans content to stop at their own trench.”

At 3:45am on 20 July, with machine guns firing at them, some 150 men from the 29th who were being held in reserve joined in the attack. The attack on their right was altered and they became exposed in a salient jutting into the German lines and were quickly enfiladed by German machine guns. In the end, they basically had to fight their way back to their own lines, 'run for it', or be killed, wounded, or captured.

As noted on the Australian War Memorial website, the nature of this battle was summed up by one soldier from the 29th: "the novelty of being a soldier wore off in about five seconds, it was like a bloody butcher's shop”.

Herb was killed in the battle and his body has not been identified. His death was not confirmed until the Court of Enquiry was finalised on 20 July 1917, exactly one year after he was killed in action.

In the Red Cross Missing and Wounded witness statements, mostly taken a year after the battle, there are conflicting reports from his friends about his death. This is not surprising given the chaos in the trenches during the battle and in the immediate aftermath, and it is no wonder records of deaths and burials are often non-existent or contradictory.

On September 5th, 1992, Lambis Englezos spoke with Bill Boyce, 58th Battalion and survivor of the Battle of Fromelles, who said:

Reports of Herb’s death were unfortunately all secondhand rather than eyewitness reports. The first Red Cross statement from fellow members of the 29th Battalion was as early December 1916 and the latest in October 1917:

A further statement (undated) was made to the Red Cross that Pte H. J. Westmoreland was one of nine soldiers killed on the evening of 19-20 July 1916 and buried on 22 July as part of a larger group of twenty or thirty in a grave in a sap (a short trench to provide cover) near Water Farm, Pozieres. This reference to Pozieres was a common mistake of the times relating to French placenames. The sap where the grave was described is probably on the Mine Ave end of the trench (marked in blue in the map above) near where the water hole is marked.

Individual soldiers mentioned in the list of nine were recovered by the German Army, buried in the mass graves and, post-2009, identified by DNA and re-interred at the Pheasant Wood cemetery at Fromelles. There are also similar notes in these soldiers’ AIF files that they are buried at Fleurbaix, and a general map reference, sheet 36, with the exception being Private Robert Gill who died at the casualty clearing station and is buried at the Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension.

It would have been chaos in the trenches during the battle and in the immediate aftermath, and it is no wonder records of deaths and burials are often non-existent or contradictory. There are no records of these soldiers being found in this vicinity. However, in 2008 a burial ground was located at Pheasant Wood behind the old German front line at Fromelles that contained the bodies of 250 British and Australian soldiers.

Many of their identities, including Fred, were confirmed through a combination of anthropological, archaeological, historical and DNA techniques.

To date (2023), DNA testing has been able to identify 177 of these 250 soldiers.

Despite being identified as being buried in the sap, four of these nine men - Ernest Wilkin, Frederick Parry, Samuel Farlow and Norman Brumm – were identified in 2010 as being buried in the Pheasant Wood Cemetery! Was the original grave disturbed by shelling or otherwise re-opened necessitating re-burial by the Germans?

With four already identified, are the remaining four (Herbert Westmoreland, Francis Woodcock, Lemuel Batey and James Higgins) still amongst those soldiers now buried at the Pheasant Wood cemetery but unidentified?

We are still seeking donors for DNA matching to identify the remaining four and, for Herbert Westmoreland, we are particularly seeking mt DNA on his mother’s Pearson line. If you have information – on either the Westmoreland or Pearson lines – we would love to hear from you.

Herbert Westmoreland has no known grave but he is still remembered. His name appears on panel 1 of the VC Corner memorial at Fromelles and on the Australian War Memorial (panel 116) in Canberra. His family have not forgotten.