Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

SOMMERVILLE James # 1266. 2nd Light Horse Regiment

James Sommerville was born in Cootamundra in 1885. He was the eldest in a family of 5 boys and a girl. His father died in 1900 when James was 15. Sometime in the years that followed James moved to Redcliffe and married Helen Mary Curry.

When James presented himself for enlistment in Brisbane on 7th June 1915 he was 30 years old and indicated that he was married with children. None of the documents in his file indicate the number of children. His attestation papers record that he was medically fit but was missing 10 teeth; whether this was due to poor dental care or accidents is unclear. James also reported that he had served for 4 years with the Australian Light Horse, a citizen’s force which provided a large number of recruits to the Light Horse Regiments.

In light of his previous experience James was listed as part of the 9th reinforcements for the 2nd Light Horse Regiment which at that time was operating as infantry during the Gallipoli campaign. Whilst in camp at Chermside awaiting overseas deployment James was charged with drunkenness while on picquet duty; he was admonished and not further punished.

On 1st September 1915, James and a number of reinforcements for the 1st and 2nd Light Horse boarded the “Ayrshire” in Sydney bound for Egypt. James had allocated 4/- of his 5/- daily pay to his wife. Helen and the children were living with a Mrs Mycock of “Hamilton House”, Redcliffe near Brisbane. When James arrived in Egypt, all the Australian troops had been withdrawn from Gallipoli and were reassembling for the next phase of the war. The infantry was to be expanded from two divisions to five prior to relocating to the Western Front. The light Horse would remain in Egypt, initially to defend the Suez Canal against an expected Turkish advance from their base in Palestine across the Sinai.

James quickly settled into the routine of mounted patrols and on 28th February 1916 was promoted to Lance Corporal. The Light Horse were actively engaged in patrolling east of the Suez Canal into the Sinai Desert to determine likely enemy movements. On 29th June, James was promoted to Temporary Corporal. It was evident from the intelligence being gathered that the Turks were massing for a major push westward and that the Australian Light Horse Regiments would soon be heavily engaged with the enemy.

James completed his will on 28th July, naming his wife as beneficiary, just as the 2nd Light Horse moved out to confront the Turks near the wells at Romani. At first the Battle of Romani which began on the 3rd August did not go well for the Australians. The 2nd Light Horse had to withdraw to more defensive position on a high dune before being outflanked. Some isolated groups of Australians were cut off.

At 3am on 4th August, a small party under the leadership of Corporal Sommerville were tasked with moving out on foot to make contact with a machine gun team that was well in advance of the Australian lines. It is remarkable that James was the leader of this group as there were at least three other NCOs in the group that would have outranked him; and is perhaps an indication that James had developed into an exemplary soldier and leader.

The facts of what occurred are recorded in the record of a Board of Inquiry contained in James’ military file. Privates Duff and Wall who were part of the group told the Inquiry on 25th August that their group was moving forward when they were met with a superior number of Turks who began shouting and firing rifles at the group. Corporal Sommerville ordered the men to run back towards the Australian lines. The Turks began to outflank the group and Sommerville veered off from the main group in an attempt to draw the attention of the Turks. Both stated that in their last sight of the Corporal, the Turks appeared to be gaining on him. Neither witness saw Sommerville fall but could neither shed light on the fate which befell him. In total, the 2nd Light Horse listed 10 men missing in action from this one skirmish. The Light Horse prided itself on the fact that no man or equipment would be left behind. This is born out by the figures which record that for the entire period of the war, only 74 Light Horsemen were captured by the enemy. These ten men captured at Romani represented one seventh of this number, in one action. No wonder the authorities treated it so seriously.

The Battle of Romani continued over the next few days with the Turks finally being defeated on the 5th August. Patrols were sent out looking for signs of the missing men but no indication of their fate was evident. The Board of enquiry concluded that the missing men were likely Prisoners of War and that no fault should be attributed to them.

It was not until 31st October 1916 that James’ name appeared on a list of POWs from the Ottoman authorities. Communications between the Turks and the British were channelled through the Dutch embassy in Constantinople (Now Istanbul). The communication advised that James Sommerville was in a POW camp at Afion Kana Hisaar.

No doubt Helen Sommerville was advised that her husband was no longer Missing in Action although there is no such record in the files. In January of 1917, Helen signed for a parcel of James’ personal effects; one testament.

Among the group of POWs captured at Romani on 4th August 1916 was Trooper George Roberts. Roberts was in fairly regular communication with a Miss Chomley of the Enquiry Bureau of the Red Cross in London. His letters were passed on through the Turkish Red Crescent. In one of his letters, a copy of which is in James Sommerville’s file, he reports that the authorities moved POWs from scattered camps to larger camps in Angora (now Ankara). He also reported on the death of a number of POWs from Typhus in the first half of 1917. Among the dead was Corporal James Sommerville. The date of his death is recorded as 4th April 1917. This was confirmed in a communication from the Ottoman Red Crescent dated 28th August 1917.

It is assumed that once his death was confirmed, James’ widow would have begun to receive a war widow’s pension, although there is no record to confirm this.

In 1922, Helen received her husband’s war medals; the 14/15 Star, Victory Medal and Empire Medal. Helen Sommerville had moved from Redcliffe to Coolangatta, her address was now C/- Dolly Varden Sweet Shop, Coolangatta. George Roberts; the fellow POW, had survived the years in captivity. He gave a fuller account of the deaths of soldiers who had been prisoners in Turkey, noting that James Sommerville had died of typhus along with many others on a forced march in snow and had been buried beside the road in an unmarked grave.

James Sommerville’s name does not appear on either of the Redcliffe Rolls of Honour. It is interesting to speculate on the reason for this but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that James’s widow and her children had left Redcliffe before the end of the war.

At the end of the war, the Imperial War Graves Commission had been established to reinter the remains of soldiers from scattered battlefields if they could be located. If no remains were located, then standard practice was to honour these men on the walls of large memorials such as Lone Pine at Gallipoli, Villers Bretonneux in France and Menin Gate or Tyne Cot in Belgium. In the case of the Turkish POWs, it was decided to site the memorial in Baghdad, and additionally to erect headstones for each soldier, even though no remains could be located.
Helen was informed of this gesture and invited to provide a personal inscription for the headstone at 3 ½ d a character, with a limit of 66 characters including spaces. There is no record of her reply.

An entry in the diary of F H Smith dated 21/02/1915 Heliopolis Egypt states "saw Summerville (Cpl) and Dave, exchanged letters with him". I think he means exchanged letters with his brother Dave (Scott William Smith), however it also means that James Summerville and Dave may have know each other.