If you could spare
a few dollars to help with the running costs of
hosting this website to keep it alive would be
very much appreciated.
Thankyou from Gravesites of Tasmania in advance.
Crouch, Raymond
Ray and Ralph Crouch, taken behind enemy lines in Belgium in
July, 1917.
Raymond enlisted into the 40th Battalion Australian
Infantry Force on 2nd June, 1916 at Claremont. He had
been born in Melbourne in 1898 and his medical records
describe him as 5 foot 5 and a quarter inches tall and
of "Rather slight build". No 1110 Private Raymond
Crouch embarked from Hobart on board the vessel
Berrima on 1st July, 1916. Brother Ralph who had
joined the 40th Battalion the day after Raymond was
sailing on the same vessel.
Raymond was sent to Etaples in France aboard another
vessel, the Princess Victoria. On 27th November
he was "marched in" to "11 Camp Hudcott".
Very soon however he was spending time in England,
hospitalised for scabies, a skin inflammation caused by
female mites burrowing and laying their eggs beneath the
skin. Given the condition of life in the trenches, the
condition was not that uncommon. Raymond was discharged
from the 18th General Hospital at Etaples in February
1917 and rejoined his unit on the front. Etaples was a
massive training camp, notorious for the brutality of
its military police. It was as a result of this
brutality and the general conditions there that the
latter half of 1917 saw the biggest mutiny by British
soldiers ever recorded. Even today much of their story
is hushed up and goes unrecorded.
In October of 1917, the third battle of Passchendaele
took place, a last ditch attempt to seize the land route
through to Ostend and thus prevent the Germans from
using it as a U-boat base. It coincided with one of the
biggest periods of heavy rainfall ever recorded there
and conditions became intolerable. Shell holes became
death traps as, filled with rainwater, the wet mud would
cling and drag any man down who was unlucky enough to
fall into one. Many soldiers died this way. At the
outset of the latest Passchendaele offensive, Raymond
was listed as "Wounded in Action". and by day's
end it had been updated yet again to read "Wounded
and Missing". A statement from one of his friend’s
recorded by the Australian Red Cross Society reads as
follows:-
“He came over with me from Hobart on S.S.Berima July
1. 16 and was on the same Machine Gun as me in D Company
in Battn.,40 II. It was on the morning of October 12th
at Passchendaele that he was carrying the Magazines, and
he was hit through the right arm above the wrist by a
bullet – not badly – I helped to bind him up. He was
pleased and thought he could get to Blighty. We sent him
back to the first aid Dressing Station about 1 ˝ miles.
He has not been seen or heard of since. Fritz was
shelling very heavily."
Informant:- 797 M.E.Cox,
Battn.,40,
D Company,
Southall.
It was not until five months later on May 29, 1918
that a Military Court of Inquiry officially found him to
have been "Killed in Action" on 13th October,
1917. He was 19 years old.
Photo Courtesy Barry Hodson
Raymond's was one of the bodies found and identified and
so was honoured with a marked grave. After the war, many
marked graves were exhumed and the bodies reburied in
official war graves. Raymond Crouch was buried at Tyne
Cot British Cemetery, five and a quarter miles
east-north-east of Ypres, France. In June of 1922, a
memorial plaque was agreed and signed for by his father
and reads, Where Australians Rest. The grave can
be found at Plot 35, Row A, Grave 14 at Tyne Cot. John
Baird Crouch took possession of Raymond's British War
Medal and Victory Medal, awarded posthumously.
Notes Courtesy Michael Crouch
Courtesy Jim Rouse
Please note that there might be information from other websites or
brochures "reprinted" here- under the laws of "fair use". In every
instance -we hope- we have provided a direct link to the owners web
site. We do not claim rights or ownership to any of their information.
We do thank them sincerely for their efforts. We have in every instance
made a good faith effort to contact and request 'reprint' permission.
Nonetheless, we do want to be certain that nothing gets lost due to web
site disappearance and the like, so it appears duplicated here.
Tasmanian War Casualties,
Honouring the past, building understanding.
