PRIVATE ANDREW MCARTHUR
AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
3RD AUGUST 1916 AGE 21
BURIED: RUE-DU-BOIS MILITARY CEMETERY, FLEURBAIX, PAS DE CALAIS, FRANCE
This may be a very conventional memorial inscription, and it is, but it can still jolt the heart. Andrew McArthur emigrated to Australia when he was 18 leaving his widowed mother in Scotland. The very next year war broke out and he volunteered virtually immediately, a fact that is recorded in his service number - 39. It was 24 August 1914. He joined the 8th Battalion Australian Infantry and embarked with it from Australia on 19 October to serve in Egypt, defending the Suez Canal from the Turks.
On 25 April 1915 the 8th Battalion landed on Gallipoli, at Anzac Cove. It remained on Gallipoli until the evacuation in December when it returned to Egypt. Here the Battalion was divided to provide battle hardened soldiers for the newly formed 60th Battalion along with fresh recruits from Australia. McArthur joined the 60th.
In March the Battalion was sent to France and on 19 July went into its first action at Fromelles with disastrous consequences - 780 casualties out of a battalion of 887 men. McArthur must have been one of the survivors - because he was killed fifteen days later.