103 YEARS BILLY WILSON

 

IT WAS A TUESDAY, WASN'T IT BILLY?

ARMENTIERES - THE BATTLEFIELD _ GERMAN BUNDESARCHIV PHOTOGRAPH

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 husband Ted .Louisa was distraught at losing her only brother 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 1800’s.

 

 

We don’t seem to have a photo of you Billy, which is strange for your time. But we know a little 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 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 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 mans land
The countless white crosses in 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.

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 to-day are forever grateful to you.

 

 

 

 

Posted 14th May 2011 by vexilla regis

Labels: JAMES WILLIAM "BILLY"WILSON

SOCIAL REALITIES OF WORLD WAR I

CHILDHOOD        SOCIAL REALITIES OF WORLD WAR I

MOTHER'S MATE CALLS

I have tried to identify the point in my life at which I began to take the family, community and national memory of World War I seriously, so far without success. Perhaps in writing this post I shall stumble across it.

My earliest memories of the "idea" of the first World War are of images of rather absurd looking flickering figures walking in a jolting fashion in odd uniforms. There was always at my Grandma Dixon's house among the large depressing photo portraits around the Lounge Room wall a young soldier, left profile,eyes raised slightly as if gazing on some distant scene. I believe his name was Patrick Boyd and that he was my Grandma Dixon's uncle(?) who died in 1919,just after the War. The family spoke as if he had died because of the War, I have yet to prove that.I wonder now if his death had any influence on my Grandad's later heavy drinking and brutish behaviour. There was never any talk of him serving in that War.

Then too, I saw in many places War Memorials, most small with names I came to realise were the dead, inscribed below, and surmounted by a soldier standing at attention and resting on arms reversed, and in the heart of Sydney City the solemn Cenotaph which I always had learned to respect

SYDNEY CENOTAPH  DAWN SERVICE  ANZAC DAY

Even in my early teens,  as other histories more remote came to attract my reading attention, World War I seemed to strike a stubborn streak in my mind - it was boring, old-fashioned, irrelevant. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that my early years were spent in the midst of World War II still the great reality of my early teens, filling movie houses, books, magazines. Maybe it made World War I seem as it did. 

Do you know? I think writing in order to think something through, works. That was obviously it. 

Off on my first visit to Canberra ,the National Capital in  1957/58.
The diesel railcar set was the latest thing operating as the Canberra-Monaro Express.
Rail fans of the time spoke of its speed as low flying! Lol! I doubt it passed 80 mph.

But as time went on,WWII 's colours began to fade, and I visited our Nation's Capital Canberra for the first time. There I visited the great War Memorial, which at the time was still principally concentrating on World War I in its magnificent displays.Now, I began to understand the terrible reality of that "War to end all Wars", and what it had meant to the infant Australia and the World.

AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL, CANBERRA

Australia lost 61,966 Military Deaths or 1.38% of her total population of 4.5 millions at the time.

United States 116,708    "            "       "  0.13%  "  "     "            "        "  92        "       "   "    "  .

That visit drew the veil away, the psychological barrier in my mind, and I came at last, to rationally think about the Great War. I was then about 17 and working for the Solicitor for Railways. I travelled to Canberra on my Railway Employee's once a year free Pass. I got more value out of that journey than I could have hoped for.

As the years have gone by, with the advent of television and growing publishing interest in World War I and then the arrival of the Internet ( how blessed we are to live in the Internet era!) my interest has grown and grown. And I have discovered Private Billy Wilson, my maternal Grandmother's brother, whom I knew had called his beautiful young sister "Doll's eyes", was blown to pieces at Armentieres.

And as if by magic, young Australians and older ones, are flocking to Anzac Day Services around the World each year in GROWING numbers at Gallipoli, Villers Bretonneux and now Fromelles. Just as I have over the years, come alive to that great tragedy, and its significance, so have many others and their children and their children's children.

Truly, of those who gave their lives, it can be said::

                                   'THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE"