The 16th Bn Machine-gun Section
on Blackboy Hill, Western Australia

The outstanding history of the Western Australian 16th Battalion begins with the Great War.  Late in 1914 the Australian Government decided to raise another force to supplement the 1st Division already in training.  The new unit was to be known as the 4th Brigade and commanded by Colonel John Monash.  Western Australia was allotted the task of raising the new 16th Battalion, consisting of a headquarters, a machinegun section, signal section and five companies of infantry.  The remaining three companies were to be filled by South Australians. 
During the course of the war the Battalion fought on Gallipoli and in France and Belgium along the Western Front.  Its battle honours include the landing at Anzac Cove, Sari Bair Ridge, Pozieres, Bullecourt, Messines, Ypres and Polygon Wood, Hamel, Mont St Quentin on the Somme and Amiens and the Hindenburg Line.   In its last engagement, which ended on 21/9/1918, it was led into battle by Major W Lynas DSO MC who had landed on Gallipoli as a private nearly three and a half years before. 

Pte O'Meara VC

The 16th Battalion was one of the most highly decorated regiments in the armies of the Allied forces.  Three Victoria Crosses were awarded ( Pte O'Meara, Pozieres 1916; L Cpl Axford, Hamel 1918; Lt McCarthy, near Madame Wood 1918), there were 2 Companions of the Order of the Bath, 1 Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, 11 Distinguished Service Orders, 33 Military Crosses, 44 Distinguished Conduct Medals, 159 Military Medals and a string of foreign and ancillary decorations.

Arguably the most remarkable pair of 16th Battalion men was Harry Murray and Percy Black.  They joined together in 1914 as private soldiers from Manjimup in the south-west of Western Australia.  Lt Col Harry Murray VC CMG DSO MC DCM Croix de Guerre, ended the war as the most highly decorated soldier after having risen from a machine gun private to command of a machine gun Battalion of 64 guns in 1918.  Major Percy Black DSO DCM Croix de Guerre, was killed at Bullecourt on the 17th of April 1917 fighting with the 16th.  It was Harry Murray who had the traumatic task of cutting his friend from the wire after an action which cost the Battalion 650 casualties of the 800 who went into action.  Lt Arnold Potts (later Brigadier A.W. Potts DSO OBE MC of Kokoda Track fame) led his 45 men of the 4th Light Trench Mortar Battery in the action and lost 34 of them, some by 'friendly' fire from the new fangled British tanks.  The 4th Brigade lost a total of 2450 men of the 3000 who fought on that fateful morning.

After the war the survivors returned to Australia.  One estimate has it that well over 10,000 men passed through the ranks of the 1000 man Battalion during the course of the war.  Some of them joined various militia units in the 1920s and 1930s but it was not until 1936 that a citizen military forces unit, the 16th Battalion, The Cameron Highlanders, was formed to train a new generation of young men as war clouds loomed in Europe.  The unit operated out of headquarters at the foot of William Street in Perth and was subsequently to provide many of the future officers and NCO's of the armed services when eventually war was declared in September, 1939.