One soldier in the 5th Division was Private Albert George Pegram (No. 3204) of 55th Battalion. Polygon Wood was to be his first and only battle. A laborer from Bredbo in New South Wales, he pressured his father to sign his enlistment papers as soon as he turned 18, and joined the AIF on the 21 August 1916. Most of Albert’s cousins and friends had enlisted during the Men from Snowy River recruitment march as it passed through the Monaro region on the way to the training camp at Goulburn just months before. After training at Goulburn, Albert left Sydney on the 11 November 1916 as part of the 8th Reinforcements for the 55th Battalion.
He joined the battalion just in time for the Polygon Wood operation. The 55th Battalion was allocated the task of clearing the German pillboxes on the left flank of the wood whilst the 56th Battalion concentrated its efforts in taking the Butte. Under a barrage which raged in front of the infantry ‘like a Gippsland bushfire’, the infantry advanced and secured the wood within a matter of hours.
The 55th was frantically digging new positions in preparation for a German counter-attack when Albert was seriously wounded. A cousin was with him at the time, and wrote to the Pegram family to tell them that he had been shot in the stomach by a sniper whilst jumping across an exposed trench with the rest of his section. He was evacuated to the 17th Casualty Clearance Station near Poperinge, and succumbed to his wounds two days later.