Volunteers of Essendon and Flemington, 1914-1918

Alexander J H Pte 3751    James   21 Inf Bn    42  Butcher    Married    C of E        

Address: Ascot Vale, PO    (In 1919 Edith Alexander was living at 47 Winchester St, Moonee Ponds.)

Next of Kin: Alexander, Edith, Mrs, wife, PO Ascot Vale    

Enlisted:  29 Jul 1915        

Embarkation: A69 Warilda 8 Feb 1916                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Private James Alexander

Rod Martin

He may well have attempted to enlist at the outbreak of war in August 1914.  If so, however, James Alexander was too old at forty-two.  Thirty-eight was the maximum age allowed.  Fast forward a year, though, and his age was more acceptable, due to a liberalisation of the eligibility criteria in June 1915.  A butcher by trade, James enlisted at the end of July that year, one of a record 36 575 to join up that month.  One wonders why, at that age, James felt compelled to join generally much younger men in the ranks.  He had an established profession, he was married with one child and he was settled in Ascot Vale.  He may have been ultra-patriotic, caught up in the feverish atmosphere at the outbreak of war.  He may have felt the need (as with many of the record number of recruits in July) to go to Gallipoli to ‘do his bit’ now that adverse reports of the conflict were starting to come through.  Whatever his reasons, James did not shy away from the obvious dangers.  He was assigned to 21 Infantry Battalion and went to Broadmeadows to undertake training.

For reasons unknown, James remained in Australia until 8 February 1916, so he did not get to Gallipoli.  Instead, he sailed on A69 HMAT Warilda and probably arrived in Egypt sometime during the next month.

HMAT Warilda, photographed in 1917 while acting as a hospital troopship  (AWM P06129.002)

By the time that he arrived, 21 Battalion, as part of 1 Anzac Corps, had already departed for the Western Front, or was about to.  In consequence, James was temporarily allocated to 1 Anzac Entrenching Battalion.  Entrenching is the process of digging trenches from the surface, rather than extending or deepening already existing ones.  As such, it would have been very hard work in those days of pick and shovel, especially for a man getting on in years (the average male life expectancy in 1916 was around fifty-six years).  For a person who enlisted in the infantry and expected to fight, such manual labour, day in and day out, would probably have been very hard for James to put up with.

Australian troops entrenching in the desert near Mena, 1915.  Digging in sand may have been easier

than in clay, but the sand walls created could collapse more easily.                          (AWM A01129)

His record is not clear about when James went to France.  However, we would be safe in assuming that it was some time in late May-early June 1916, just prior to the transfer of 2 Anzac Corps there during June.  Certainly, the first available war record of the entrenching battalion is June 1916, and by the sixth of that month it was located at La Motte, north-east of Marseilles.  On the twenty-fourth of the month, it moved north to the training camp at Etaples, and then to billets at Dranoutre, not far from Bailleul, near the Belgian border.  From that date until the end of July, the war diary monotonously records ‘Working parties. Camp improvements‘  and ‘Routine as above’ for almost every day.  The only real changes came on 10 and 31 July when 243 and 232 troops respectively were despatched to infantry battalions as reinforcements.  The latter transferral would have been greatly needed as 1 Australian Division had been involved in the Battle of Pozières between 23 and 25 July and had sustained 5 285 casualties.  James’s ostensible unit, 21 Battalion, was part of 2 Division, that relieved 1 Division on the twenty-fifth and finally captured Pozières ridge on 4 August.  For its part, it had lost 6 846 men.  On 22 August, it was ordered back into the fray, being required to attack and capture Mouquet Farm.  It suffered a further 1 268 casualties in capturing the farm, but had to give it up shortly afterwards.

James was not among the two sets of reinforcements sent in July.  In fact, he had to wait until 23 September to be transferred to 21 Battalion.  In the meantime, while moving closer to the front line near Albert, the entrenching battalion was still engaged in the same back-breaking tasks.

A support trench quickly dug at Anzac Cove, 26 April 1915            (AWM C01924)

Given such a routine, it is perhaps not surprising that, on 3 September, James was court-martialled.  His crime was listed as drunkenness and using obscene language when addressing a non-commissioned officer, for which he was fined ten shillings (one dollar).  In committing this offence, was he revealing his frustration?  It is tempting to suggest that, just maybe, yes he was.

If  this were the case, then James would have been happy to finally join 21 Battalion which, at the time, was in reserve and training at St. Lawrence Camp, near Ypres in southern Belgium.  Even though in reserve, the battalion, as part of 6 Brigade, was still within shelling distance of the front line.  As evidence, on 22 and 23 September respectively, the brigade suffered two men and then another one wounded.

On 12 October1916, 21 Battalion received orders to move south of Ypres on the fourteenth to relieve 7 and 8 Battalions, located near Hill 60, opposite the German-held settlement of Messines.  In June the following year, Hill 60 would become famous for being the location of some of the nineteen huge mine explosions that marked the beginning of the successful Battle of Messines – the initial strike of what was to become known as the Third Battle of Ypres.  The Australian film Beneath Hill 60 tells the story of Australia’s role in the planting and detonation of some of those mines.

On 14 October 1916, the relief was completed, but at the cost of three men killed and five wounded.  The Germans put up a heavy barrage to welcome 21 Battalion, and this went on for the next five days until the men were relieved in turn, at the cost of fourteen wounded.

Hill 60 in August 1917, after the mine explosions.        (AWM E02045)

21 Battalion began moving south on 19 October, stopping in Steenvorde, just over the border in northern France, so that the men could cast their votes for Prime Minister ‘Billy’ Hughes’s first conscription plebiscite.  Then it was on towards Buire sur l’Ancre, in the vicinity of the Somme Valley.  The famous Battle of the Somme had been going on in the area since the beginning of July.  Some ground had been gained, but it was of no strategic significance, and the battle was petering out by late October.  The beginnings of what was to be the most severe winter in forty years were to arrive the following month.

On 4 November, the battalion relieved 30 Battalion in the trenches at Mametz wood, east of the town of Albert.  It established a strong point there, but suffered five men killed and seven wounded in the process.  The German bombardments were described by the company commander as being ‘violent’.  Over the next three days, until the battalion was relieved, it suffered a further six men killed and twenty wounded. 

Even though relieved, the battalion had to locate in nearby support trenches and carry out general fatigues.  The Germans were able to bombard these trenches, and they did so.  Up to 15 November, eight men were killed and twenty-six wounded by enemy shells.  Even when relieved again, on the fifteenth, the men could not get out of harm’s way.  Located in yet more trenches, the unit lost a further two killed and nineteen wounded up to 19 November.  On the twentieth, another seven men were wounded.  One of them was James, who received a wound to his left shoulder and  was evacuated to a field dressing station before being transported to Beaufort War Hospital in England.

The main street of Buire sur l’Ancre, 1913   (AWM C03098)

At this point, James’s war record becomes a little convoluted.  He was discharged from hospital on 12 January 1917 and given a furlough until he had to report to Perham Downs camp on the twenty-ninth of the month, where he was reclassified as B19.  It is very difficult to discover just what such a classification referred to.  However, if we believe the traditional understanding that ‘A1’ meant fully fit, then there was a bit of a problem that caused James to be downgraded.  Worse was to come on 10 February when he was further downgraded to C3. Was his shoulder injury not improving?  It was probably because of this that he was sent to a depot in Weymouth, Dorset, on 14 February and from there to Hurdcott, a training camp near Fovant in Wiltshire, instead of going back to France or Belgium.  He did finally return to the continent, however, on 16 May after being transferred to the veterinary corps.  He was obviously not fit for front line duties and instead went to the Australian Veterinary Hospital in Calais.  Just what his duties were there is unclear.  He may have been given such tasks as feeding and exercising sick horses.   His status was confirmed on 25 July that year when he was classified as ‘P.U.”.  It is difficult not to believe that this means ‘permanently unfit’.  If so, however, it was obviously felt that he could continue to carry out his duties at the hospital as he remained there until 12 December, when he was himself admitted to a hospital suffering from an “M’ wound in his left hand.  Just what was the nature of this wound is unclear.  However, after he was transferred to King George Hospital in England on 21 December it was described as being slight and having been caused by an accident.

On 28 December, James was transferred to the Australian Army Hospital at Dartford in Kent, where his wound was more accurately described: an injury to the middle finger of his left hand.   He was at Dartford until 11 January 1918, when he was returned to Hurdcott.  From there, he moved to the veterinary corps’ training camp at Parkhouse, not far from Andover in south-central England.  He remained there until 9 November, when he transferred back to Weymouth. We must assume that he either carried out duties at Parkhouse that were similar to the ones in which he was involved  in Calais, or he was training other recruits.

Entrance to the veterinary hospital at Calais.  The operating theatre is in the centre of the photograph.  (AWM E04470)

Parkhouse Camp, near Shipton Bellinger village, 1918       (shiptonbellinger.org.uk)

The November transfer to Weymouth however, was for a specific reason.  He was scheduled for early return to Australia, even though the war had not officially ended.  The reason is given at the bottom of his war record: ‘Prem Senility’.  James sailed for Australia on the tenth of the next month, being described as an invalid, and arriving home on 8 February.  He was granted a medical discharge on 25 March 1919.

Sadly, we do not know much of what happened to James after his discharge.  His wife and child no doubt welcomed him back from the war, but faced an uncertain future with the likelihood that his mental faculties would deteriorate further into full-blown dementia within a few years.  However, the dire diagnosis may have been incorrect.  In 1920, in response to a query to the repatriation department regarding a possible pension, James was reported as working.  In 1923, he and his family had moved (probably to Korumburra in Gippsland), as evidenced by the fact that his war medals had been returned unclaimed at the Ascot Vale address.  However, by 1923, he had also moved away from that town, and the medals were again returned to Base Records.  In fact, James’s record contains a letter sent by him as late as 1941 (and quite coherent), asking why he had not received those medals.  The letter was sent from Burnley, so James had moved back to the city some time in the intervening years.  By that stage, James was sixty-eight years old.

The medals were duly despatched and finally received.  We hope that James was able to treasure them in his remaining years.

Sources

Australian Bureau of Statistics

Australian War Memorial

Google Earth

National Archives of Australia

www.shiptonbellinger.org.uk

Travers, Richard: Diggers in France: Australian soldiers on the Western Front,

                             Sydney, ABC Books, 2008

War Service Commemorated

Essendon Town Hall A-F

Ascot Vale State School

St Thomas' Anglican Church

Essendon Gazette Roll of Honour Wounded

Regimental Register