One fight that even 'Nutsy' Bolt couldn't win
PETER FITZSIMONS
April 24, 2010
Herbert Bolt, the famed and fiery Newtown centre, was among about 250 soldiers recently identified from mass graves on the Western Front, writes Peter FitzSimons.
Herbert Bolt, known as "Nutsy'', was a hell of a footballer and a hard man to beat. Born and raised in the very heart of rugby league, Newtown, he played no fewer than 52 matches for the legendary Bluebags from 1912 to 1915 and represented NSW twice on their tour of Queensland in 1913.
A rugged utility back who usually played in the centres, he liked scoring tries and brawling, though not necessarily in that order. In the first of those Queensland matches, "[Dally] Messenger made a fine run and sent the ball to Bolt, who again crossed." In the second match, Nutsy was quite rightly sent off for brawling, with, "the action of the referee receiving general endorsement."
Nutsy never minded a fight, no matter the odds.
And so, notwithstanding the fact that he had a beloved young wife, Jennie, and baby daughter, Monica, when Newtown was eliminated from the 1915 City Cup, Nutsy went off to the Sydney Showground and was soon training with the 55th Battalion - one of the battalions destined to write its name in blood on the Western Front.
For the Newtown footballer was soon in the thick of it like few men have ever been in the thick of any battle, before or since.
On the warm evening of July 19, 1916, Nutsy and his comrades of the 55th Battalion were at the prow of the Australian 5th Division when - at the behest of a British general for whom it seemed like a good idea - they attacked the entrenched German positions atop the ridge of Fromelles, from across a boggy 400 yards of open ground.
A contemporary account describes the scene, "Stammering scores of German machine-guns spluttered violently, drowning the noise of the cannonade. The air was thick with bullets, swishing in a flat criss-crossed lattice of death
Hundreds were mown down in the flicker of an eyelid, like great rows of teeth knocked from a comb
Men were cut in two by streams of bullets [that] swept like whirling knives
It was the charge of the Light Brigade once more, but more terrible, more hopeless."
In the middle of it all, Nutsy kept fighting. As dawn broke after that terrible night - a night when the 5th Australian Division had lost over 5000 men killed or wounded - he was still alive and had even reached the first of the German trenches. His battalion mate, F Johnston left an account of what happened then
"On the morning of 20.7.16 at about 5am at Fleurbaix, [Nutsy] and I were close to one another, when we were attacked by the Germans. He got more than six of them with his bayonet and the butt of his rifle, when he got a bullet through the head. He fell instantly, being killed outright. He was as game as any man, and was a well-known Newtown footballer."
All who knew him were devastated at the news of his death, and the Newtown club rallied to raise funds for his widow and child. Events included a fancy dress parade down King St, Newtown, and then on to Erskineville Oval, where a series of novelty events were held, including a race where those who were first across the finish line then had to dismember an effigy of the Kaiser, with the winner being the person with the biggest portion. With the money raised, the Bluebags were able to purchase a house for Jennie and wee Monica.
Meanwhile, there Nutsy lay for nigh on the next 90 years, in a mass grave at Fromelles, and would have so remained in anonymity for all eternity, were it not for one thing. Due to the persistence of the Victorian schoolteacher and amateur historian, Lambis Englezos - who couldn't reconcile the numbers of war graves apparent with those Australians confirmed to have been killed - the forgotten mass grave was finally discovered in 2008 and exhumed in 2009. And, after DNA testing, the remains of Nutsy were finally positively identified only weeks ago.
"I am absolutely ecstatic," says Robert Bolt, 60, of Clovelly, who, as Nutsy's oldest living male relative, provided the DNA sample which matched. "And my sons - one of whom is such dead-ringer for Nutsy, that's what we call him - are equally over the moon. The whole family is thrilled that he will now have his own marked grave, because that is what he, and all of them, deserve."
In a sacred ceremony on July 19, Herbert "Nutsy" Bolt will be reinterred in the new Australian War Grave Cemetery at Fromelles, with his own grave-stone, and the grand-daughter he never knew, baby Monica's daughter, Josephine Shelley, 60, of Taren Point, attending.
Lest we forget.
With thanks to noted rugby league historian Terry Williams, who is compiling a book on the involvement of rugby league players in WWI.
