The 10th Battalion of the 1st Australian Division was amongst
the most feared fighting forces in the world leading up to World War 1.
The Terrible Tenth, as they were known in the British Army, had proven their
valor several times, with two of their men having received the coveted Victoria Cross.
When they were recruited by Field Marshall Douglas Haig to raid the Celtic Wood,
a deep forest within Flanders, Belgium, the 85-men crew accepted without hesitation.
Everyone was shocked when the Terrible Tenth suffered so many losses.
Even worse, 37 of the men were missing, and they would never be found.
How could so many men belonging to one of the most fierce battalions disappear without a trace?
Many wondered whether they had been abducted by Germans and lost in a mass graveyard.
Others were convinced there was a supernatural element to the disappearances.
The infamous Celtic Wood raid became known
as the Australian Imperial Force's greatest mystery in the Great War.
The Terrible Tenth
After the victorious World War 1 Battle of Broodseinde by the
British Second and Fifth armies in October 1917, Field Marshall Haig,
a Senior war officer, believed the opposing German forces were close to collapsing.
This conviction led him to plan a second offensive to capture the Passchendaele Ridge.
For the plan to work, it was first necessary to perform a raid on Celtic Wood,
a forest in Flanders, Belgium, occupied by the Germans.
Haig knew just who to summon: The Terrible Tenth.
The 10th Battalion of the 1st Australian Division was known as one of the bravest fighters of The
Great War's Commonwealth Battalions. They were young and scrappy, yet determined and courageous.
This wild bunch had contributed to the Gallipoli Campaign in modern-day Turkey.
They also had displayed their bravery in the French and Belgian trenches,
where two of their soldiers earned Victoria Crosses.
Field Marshal Haig tasked the men to raid the Celtic Wood forest, a speck of land on the
Belgian map near the primary Passchendaele Ridge, surrounded by tall trees and lingering smoke.
A similar raid had been successfully carried out by the 11th and 12th Battalions in
the area just weeks before. It yielded numerous enemy casualties and prisoners.
That raid lasted only 8 minutes, and the Australians returned with only two wounded men.
Haig believed that another takeover of the area would prove successful.
The Plan
The 10th, led by 22-year-old Lieutenant Frank Scott, was tasked with destroying the enemy's
dugouts in an attempt to draw German artillery fire away from the leading Australian and New
Zealand Army Corps' attack on Passchendaele. They would then retire on a flare signal.
While the Terrible Tenth raided Celtic Wood, the 2nd Australian Division,
on the northern flank of the 10th, would mount a large attack to protect the main British advances.
To deceive Germans and make them believe that the raid was part of the main advance,
the troops would charge at dawn instead of the usual night attack.
Ready For Battle
The Terrible Tenth had suffered over 50 casualties in the week leading up
to the attack because of other missions, and the party's size decreased from 109 to over 80 men.
A mixture of Gallipoli battle veterans and more recent replacements,
the men were ready for battle once again.
A set of three men from the Australian 3rd Light Trench Mortar Battery were added to the 10th,
tasked with the destruction of the dugouts and blockhouses.
When Lt Scott received orders to raid Celtic Wood on October 8 at 6 pm, he had less than 12
hours to prepare. Field Marshall Haig wanted the attack to take place before dawn the next day.
The soldiers split up into four reduced platoons of around 20 men each, with Lieutenant Roy James,
Second Lieutenants Albert Rae, Walter Wilsdon DCM, and Leonard Laurie, each in charge of a platoon.
At 4:50 am on October 9,
Scott led his men into no man's land. That was the last time most of them were ever seen again.
A Sad Defeat
A surprisingly few number of men made it back to the Australian lines later that day.
The 10th Battalion suffered numerous casualties, and the Terrible Tenth was no more.
Throughout the day, Red Cross volunteers attempted to retrieve some of the perished
and wounded from the site, but were shot back by the German Infantry Regiment 448.
Assistance came with the 32nd Battalion moving close to the line 12 hours later.
After nightfall, some of the exhausted men hiding for hours in shell holes
and hollowed-out trees arrived at the trenches carrying their wounded comrades.
Some of them further risked their lives and returned to Celtic Wood
with stretchers to rescue more soldiers.
At 2 am on October 10, almost 24 hours after the Celtic Wood Raid,
the relief was suspended, and the devastated Battalion marched away for a much-needed break.
Of the 88 men who left the lines at dawn, only 14 returned unharmed.
Thirty-seven assumed losses of the Terrible Tenth Battalion simply vanished,
as if they had succumbed to the turbulent fog from the everlasting fire in the Belgian forest.
And so the mystery of Celtic Wood began.
The Mystery
After the raid on Celtic Wood,
several Commonwealth newspapers reported the attack as a victory.
The Capricornian, a Queensland-based newspaper, reported on the event, stating that [QUOTE]:
"The Australians, after terrific bayonet fighting, gained possession of Celtic Wood[...] a pocket
of Germans in Daisy Wood are still holding out, but their resistance is fast dwindling".
But these statements could not have been further from the truth. For decades,
Celtic Wood lingered as the most significant Australian mystery of the Great War.
Several theories regarding the missing men's fate swirled around, as their remains were never found.
German military records never once mentioned the raid on Celtic Wood,
which led some historians to theorize that the men were lost in a hidden grave.
There was even talk of a supernatural element that
swallowed the men into the Belgian forest’s thick fog. How else could
37 men belonging to a battalion with such a fierce reputation disappear out of nowhere?
Conflicting Reports
The Celtic Wood raid was a mystery for decades mostly due to misreporting,
disinformation and confusion.
Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Wilder-Neligan, one of the few Celtic Wood survivors,
described that the Germans' counterattack was so strong that [QUOTE] "Heavy casualties were
inflicted upon the enemy...I am only able to account for 14 unwounded members of the party."
Another unnamed survivor contradicted Wilder-Neligan
and said that only seven men made it back to the trenches.
Official army records only listed 37 of the men as being missing without a trace.
Many historians misread Wilder-Neligan and other official reports to mean that
only 14 soldiers from the 10th Battalion were accounted for,
and the exact number of missing men was widely debated for years.
In 2008, researchers Chris Henschke and Robert Kearney
attempted to solve the Celtic Wood mystery once and for all.
Kearney, who had already researched the 10th Batallion's history, supplemented
his information with the help of Henschke and cross-referenced their information with
countless eyewitness statements, official action reports, and even wartime letters and diaries.
Almost a century after the tragic incident, the two men finally declared that they
could account for the fates of all the missing 10th Batallion's men.
And the story of the failed Celtic Wood raid finally became clear.
The Real Story
With the new research, a new timeline and clarifying details emerged.
At 5:20am on October 9, the attack began, and British artillery fired upon Celtic Wood,
disorienting the Germans stationed in the front line. This allowed Lt. Scott and the
Terrible Tenth to enter the German-controlled territory through the forest's northwestern side.
The opening attack favored the Australians,
as Lt. Scott led some of his men just behind the first line of the trenches,
flanking the Germans still on the front and forcing them to retreat immediately.
But the Germans from the Infantry Regiment 448 recovered quickly,
largely because the attack wasn't that much of a surprise.
The enemy knew the British would come back to Celtic Wood after the previous raid.
This time, they were prepared to fight back.
The Germans called an artillery barrage down into
Celtic Wood and the support areas of the 10th Batallion's front lines,
which immediately cut off any assistance the Australian raiders could call upon.
The Germans began to counterattack immediately. Aided by machine-guns stationed in blockhouses all
over Celtic Wood and hidden snipers, they fired a deadly rain of ammunition upon the Australians.
Soon, another large party of Germans joined the attack.
The 10th Battalion was surrounded, and for the next 90 minutes,
chaos reigned upon Celtic Wood as the tables turned for the beloved Terrible Tenth.
After the fierce battle, the signal flare to retire was fired, but it was too late.
The few men still standing began to withdraw from the area, fighting their way out of the
enemy trenches in small groups as they left their deceased friends behind.
Even after escaping the German lines,
fire from the blockhouses and snipers continued to hunt the remaining men.
Lieutenant Scott was struck by enemy fire. Sergeant Major Hamilton Milton tried to carry
Scott back to the Australian lines but had to leave his superior on the ground and save himself.
Other surviving soldiers hid in shell holes and waited for relief.
Mystery No More
Sadly, the Terrible Tenth’s courage did not mean much in the overall scheme of the war.
The British General advance stalled, and the only objective that they were able to
capture was Poelcappelle, a small village on the northern flank of the line. This became
the namesake of the battle the Celtic Wood raid occurred on. Caught in a rain of artillery fire,
it is likely that little of the missing men remained to be found.
Back in the Belgian Woods, the Germans withdrew 550 yards,
and the area where the Terrible Tenth gave their lives for their country became a No Man's land.
The Celtic Wood raid ceased being a mystery and became a terrible tragedy.