Impressions of France by a Bunbury Boy

Article in the Bunbury Herald

5 January 1918

by Private Tom Johns

The following letter from Private Tom Johns, son of Mr. and Mrs. Johns, of Symmonds Street, Bunbury, was received by us by the last English mail : —

To the Editor 'Bunbury Herald.' Lewisham Hospital, London, November 1, 1917.

Dear Sir, — Thinking you might like a few impressions of France and Belgium from a Bunbury lad, I am sending you a few facts. Not being allowed to write freely while in the war theatre, I am writing while in hospital. Well, no doubt about it, France is a beautiful country, although this terrible war is raging through it. The land and soil is simply perfect — no clearing; no manure required. They don't plough more than six inches deep; it is truly wonderful soil, and every other tree is a fruit tree. In spring and summer it indeed looks perfect. They shovel apples from the waggons into the railway trucks, like Paul Ferguson's lads shovel coal at the loco. Well, the cities that the Boche has been unable to wreck are indeed beautiful. Le Havre, Rouen, Calais are all grand! There are lots of other grand, big towns, I have been through, which bear the mark of the Hun outrages. Albert, Bapaume Arras, Balule, St. Pol, Hazebrook — all fine big places — have been bombed. It is cruel to see all the lovely towns and villages razed to the ground. The same again in Flanders and Belgium. Poperhinghe and Ypres have both been heavily shelled, in fact there is hardly a wall left standing in Ypres. I met a lot of old Bunbury boys the night before we moved into the line at Ypres. If any of their parents want to know about them, they were all in the best of nick. We all had a yarn together about old times at good old Bunbury. There were 'Crimmie' Wenn, Steve McDonald, young Walker, Jimmy Webster, the two Percy Dunns (both in the Railway Corps), Jack Caporn and Micky Miller, in fact we were just about old Bunbury railway boys together. They were all in different battalions to me so I don't know how they have got on since. Young Peter Buswell, of the same battalion as myself, was among us. He is still going strong.

I'll give you a small account of the battle of Polygon Wood that took place a few days afterwards, and which I took part in. We moved up from Ypres in the night; pretty dark it was too, and, after a lot of hard work, floundering in and out of shell holes up to your middle in mud, we got into the support lines without any casualties, which was extremely lucky. We were in those supports (you could hardly call them trenches) for just on a week. It was a regular hell, waiting to move up to the front lines. Shells were falling everywhere. My bit of a 'possy’ got blown in on top of me, but it happened to be a 'dud.' Well, we moved up to the front lines on the morning of the 26th September (I should say crawled up). Fritz was sending his flares up everywhere (and he has got some flares too), and the snipers were pretty busy trying to pick us off, but again we were lucky. We got in without casualties. Our beautiful barrage— and it is a barrage, I don't wonder at the Boche not facing it— opened up at 5.30, and we hopped over at 10 minutes to 6. She was a hell let loose. Fritz had machine guns planted everywhere — in his pill boxes and in the Wood - but our lads soon had them routed out, and we gained our objective — Polygon Wood. We got our 'banjo's' off our backs and started to work on our new home (and it takes a lot of work too, with your gear on your back, 250 rounds of ammunition around your waist, and two or three bandoliers around your neck). I had not been working long before I got a hole blown out of my right arm above the elbow, which put a stop to my 'banjo' work then, and for a while to come. A lump of Fritz's high explosive shell hurts some. A thousand prisoners went through our station that trip. Well, I got up to the dressing station all right and got fixed up, and I thank God that I was able to walk there. The poor stretcher cases didn't have much chance on that front. It is a providence how a man got away with out being blown into eternity. 'Hellfire Corner' and 'Shrapnel Gully' were very warm quarters to pass. We got aboard an ambulance train in the afternoon, and eventually got to Rouen after 20 hours travelling. I guess I had to stick some pain on that ride, with my muscle blown about and the sinews severed in my arm, and eight in the compartment, but nothing compared with a terrible lot more poor lads on that train. I got fixed up at No. 8 General, Rouen. I thought I was ‘Narpoo' war, but I have still got my arm, thank God! I was in No. 8 General for a fortnight, waiting to get across to Blighty, and arrived here on the 9th October. The nurses in France and England are a splendid staff of women. There were several Australian sisters in No. 8 General. I am still a bed patient in this large military hospital, but expect to get up any day now, although it will be a while before I will have the use of my arm again; but I would not be sorry to miss a part of the winter in the trenches. Last winter was an awful winter, and it will be terrible in Flanders this coming winter. I must ring off now, my hand is getting a bit dead on it. 

Dick Ganfield, Jimmy Lynch, Dug Wenn, 'Napper' Hall and Wally Crobar, all 16th Battalion from Bunbury, were going strong. Joe Weiss, Ringwood Sinclair and Tom Downes are with the Battalion too.