YOUR MOTHER NEVER KNEW

ARMENTIERES - THE BATTLEFIELD _ GERMAN BUNDESARCHIV PHOTOGRAPH


On this cold but brilliantly sunny Aussie morning
I recall that other 14th May, ........94 years ago,
and on the other side of the world:

IT WAS A TUESDAY, WASN’T IT BILLY?

- TUESDAY, 14TH MAY, 1918

Private James William“BILLY”Wilson   Service No. 5659

17TH Battalion, Australian Imperial Force

KILLED IN ACTION Near / Armentieres FRANCE In the course of repelling the German Forces, whose attempt to reach the Sea had already failed.

Did you know it was Tuesday, or in that Hell around Armentieres, blasted to Kingdom Come for miles and miles, did you really care what day it was?

THE ICONIC AUSTRALIAN SLOUCH HAT

They didn’t tell your Mum how you died, blown to pieces by a German shell blast.But your Superior Officer took the trouble to tell my Grandma and Grandad – your Sister Louisa (“doll’s eyes” you called her) and her German-born husband Ted. Louisa was distraught at losing her only brother whom she loved so much. In due course, the Army provided your Mother with a Certificate of Burial for which Ted made an ornate carved wooden frame with all the flags of the Allies around its edges. (I guess he inherited that skill from his Grandfather Carl Dopmeyer whose sculpture and wood carving gained him fame in Germany in the second half of the 1800s.

We don’t seem to have a photo of you Billy, which is strange for your time. But we know a lot  about you:

You enlisted on 16th November 1915. You were said to be 27 years old and 3 months, of dark complexion weighing 119 lbs. and 5 Feet 3 ½ “in height. So you were a little bloke by Aussie standards but true to your English born parents’ physique. You had no distinguishing marks on your body. You were a Laborer.

But what’s this? You were Discharged just over a month later on 22nd December 1915. Because you had insufficient teeth to masticate!

17th Battalion A.I.F. (AUSTRALIAN  IMPERIAL FORCE) COLOUR PATCH

But you can’t keep a good bloke down, and on 24th February 1916(only two months later) you enlist again! 

By now you have a “Fresh” complexion, Brown eyes, Brown Hair, your height is the same but at 27 years and 6 months you weigh in at 116lbs And you have acquired a scar at your Right eye, on your Right thigh and inside your Right knee. Did this happen during your initial enlistment? An accident? All the injury was on your right side and the inclusion of a scar behind your right knee doesn’t sound like a fight!

Whatever the case, the lack of teeth, (stated to have occurred over the 10 preceding years due to cavities)– perhaps you had obtained dentures (?)- did not stop you from being accepted again.

You appear to have been buried initially at Fouilloy and later exhumed and re-interred at the great Australian War Cemetery at Villers- Bretonneux.

"

The sun shining down on these green fields of France

The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance

   The trenches have vanished long under the plow

    
    No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now

    
    But here in this graveyard that's still no man's land

    The countless white crosses in the mute witness stand
    
     To man's blind indifference to his fellow man

      And a whole generation were butchered and damned

      Did they beat the drums slowly?

      Did they play the fife lowly?

      Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?

      Did the band play the last post and chorus?

      Did the pipes play the "Flowers of the Forest"?

     (The Green Fields of France - Eric Bogle)

The Australian War Memorial at Villers Bretonneux

On 4 th February 1919 your Mother received from the Army your personal effects – you know how pitifully few and pathetic they were. You had made your Mother your Next of Kin because your Father had died previously.

 

CONCLUSION

I’m sorry Billy, that I haven’t yet got more information about you and the War you fought, but I am on the job and will set the record straight as best I can.I do now have your official Army records in facsimile. I am still striving to locate a photograph!

You and your comrades, who already went through Hell on earth in France, are in my daily prayers for the repose of your Souls. And we who live our lives today are forever grateful to you.