Joan of Arc Battalion

Charles Bean called them the most famous family of soldiers in Australian history.

Known as “The Fighting Leanes of Prospect” in SA, all five brothers and six sons of military age enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in the Great War.

Four were killed in action or died of wounds.  

The most renowned member of the family was Brigadier General Sir Raymond ‘Bull’ Leane, commander of the 48th Battalion and later the 12th Brigade.

The 48th, which included Ray’s brother Benjamin and three nephews, became known as the Joan of Arc Battalion, as it was ‘made of all Leanes’ (Maid of Orleans).

Ben and nephew Allan were casualties of the First Battle of Bullecourt, ironically only two hours from Rouens where Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake in 1431.

Ray, an officer in the Citizen Forces and a Kalgoorlie retailer, enlisted three weeks after war was declared in 1914.

He earned a Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross at Gallipoli before leading his men into battle at Pozières, Bullecourt, Passchendaele - where he was severely wounded - and Amiens.

Back home, Ray Leane was South Australian Police Commissioner from 1920 to 1944 and was knighted on retirement.

Author Michael Enright, in Western Front Eyewitness Accounts, records that Leane wrote to Bean about the 1916 attack on the German-held Mouquet, saying: “Never did I experience such continuous and concentrated shelling. We went into the trenches with over 1000 men. We returned to the trenches a few days later, but the Battalion strength was then under 300.”

Ray’s elder brother Sir Edwin, a Boer War veteran who ended the First World War as Head of Ordnance Services for the AIF in France, was later administrator of Norfolk Island.