Lance Corporal Herbert Gordon Akhurst, 20th Infantry Battalion AIF

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Members of the 20th Infantry Battalion AIF

Australian War Memorial

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Herbert Akhurst was born in 1893 in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, the son of newspaper printer Thomas Akhurst and his wife Emilie. One of five children, he received his education at Annandale Superior Public School, and served in the Sydney Irish Rifles for a year on completion of his schooling. When war broke out in 1914 he was employed as an accountant in Sydney.

Akhurst was 22 years old when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 18 August 1915. After enlisting, Akhurst studied at Duntroon for a year, emerging as a sergeant before embarking with the 20th Battalion from Sydney on board the troopship Wiltshire in August 1916.

Akhurst arrived in England in late 1916 and spent time training. He reverted to the rank of private before leaving for France in December that year. He joined his unit in January 1917 and was stationed around Albert in the Somme region of Northern France. Throughout February the 20th Battalion served in the front lines. Akhurst was promoted to lance corporal and had his first taste of life in the trenches. He wrote home to his parents to describe his experiences, saying:

“I was with my sergeant at the water pump in a certain village. We were talking to the cook and I took a parcel from him. We only walked about three yards away from him when a shell lobbed in between us. The force of it blew my tin hat off and knocked the sergeant over … the cook was wounded in three or four places and I had blood on my face … Well you would have thought Fritz had seen us because all the way down that street he followed us with shells. You can bet we didn’t dawdle on the way! Then about three days after there were four of us sitting in a dug out at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon when without any warning it fell in on us. Fritz had dropped a big shell on top of us!”

In March, Akhurst’s unit fought during the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line. Having taken the French village of Bapaume during the retreat, the allies set up battalion headquarters in the old Bapaume town hall. Akhurst took an administrative position working behind the lines as a clerk.

Before the retreat, the enemy had set a series of traps in anticipation of the allied advance. Deep in the cellars of the town hall the Germans had placed an explosive device attached to a wire slowly corroding in acid. Akhurst was billeted in the cellars of the town hall where he wrote a letter to his parents on 23 March, describing his wartime experience.

Just two days later, the wire snapped, detonating the bomb in the cellar, obliterating the building and killing 26 men. Among the dead was 24-year-old Lance Corporal Herbert Akhurst.

Akhurst’s comrade Private Penfold, who was in Bapaume the following day, described the remains of the town hall as “a heap of bricks”.

Working parties attempted to recover the bodies of those killed in the explosionfor at least five days.

Lance Corporal Akhurst’s remains were laid to rest, but were lost during subsequent fighting in the region. Today, he is commemorated on the Australian memorial at Villers-Bretonneux.

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