10 days in the front line

By Marg Powell, Specialist Library Technician, Metadata Services | 5 April 2018

Charles 'Aubrey' Fox, 52nd Infantry Battalion. The Queenslander Pictorial, 7 April 1917 p24

Charles 'Aubrey' Fox was born in Cooktown to George Fox and Emily Evans in 1886. His parents and three siblings, George, Thomas and John, had emigrated to Queensland from England in 1882. Aubrey married Agnes Hamper in 1908 and their daughter Beatrice was born the same year.

In February 1917 Aubrey stepped forward and volunteered to serve with the First AIF at the recruiting office in Brisbane. Initially assigned to the 47th Infantry Battalion, he trained at Rifle Range Camp, Enoggera. Aubrey was chosen to be a driver for the Field Artillery, then allotted to the 31st Battalion, where he trained outside of Queensland for several months.

Finally in August 1917 he was transferred back to Queensland and joined the 10th Reinforcements for the 52nd Infantry Battalion, C. Company. They left Brisbane via a troop train which took them to Sydney to join the other reinforcements onboard HMAT Euripides.

Leaving Sydney in October 1917 the reinforcements arrived in England on Boxing Day, where they were taken to the training camp at Codford, soon after Aubrey was admitted to hospital for 7 days, with bronchitis.

Fit to serve once again, Aubrey Fox joined his unit in the field just after Easter, on 4 April 1918, where the Battalion was conducting operations near Dernancourt.

Just 10 days later on the evening of 24 April 1918, Private Aubrey Fox was killed.

Shortly after a 'stunt' at Villers-Bretonneux he and three others - John Boyd #3114, George Henry Cooper #3131 and Frank Charles Dellar #3284 left the lines to go for rations, when they were hit and killed outright by an explosive shell. Private Clyde Greenaway #3640 of the 49th Battalion who knew Aubrey well, was a stretcher bearer and carried him in after seeing Aubrey lying out in the open, but he was already dead. Greenaway handed Fox's belongings over to one of the Officers for safekeeping. The men were later buried, about 500 yards behind their front line, by men from the Pioneer Battalion, near Corbie Road by Hamlet Wood.

Extract from Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau files, Charles Aubrey Fox.

The AIF kit store forwarded Aubrey's effects to his wife Agnes who in 1918 was residing at Skew Street, North Quay, Brisbane. They were being transported on SS Barunga which was hit by a torpedo from a German submarine on its way back to Australia. The 800 sick and wounded on board were rescued, but the ship subsequently sank, along with its cargo on 15 July 1918.

Later as medals were issued and awarded, Aubrey Fox's were dispatched and received by his wife Agnes, now Mrs Clarence Elliott, residing in Wardell south of Ballina, NSW.

10 days in the front line

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