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John Lawley Mellings had emigrated from England before signing on with the A.I.F. on 15 May 1915 at Liverpool west of Sydney. He was born in May 1884 in Atcham, a small village in Shrewsbury England to Richard and Jane Mellings, one of four children. John was living in Worcester in 1903 when his father passed away and made a decision soon after to migrate to Australia, landing in Sydney late 1905. But his stay was not permanent at this time as he returned home on the passenger liner Suevic landing London 10 June 1906. Whatever the reason for his return he was back in Australia by the outbreak of the war and duly enlisted. He was one of only two Mellings to enlist in the A.I.F.

Mellings had married in Sydney in 1913 to 23 year-old Stella Esther Ball and they were living at 200 York Street North Sydney. They welcomed a daughter Audrey Daphne in 1914.
Now 29 years of age, Mellings was a trained electrical mechanic having been apprenticed to Morris Jones and Co. for over 3 years in England. At the time of his enlistment he was working as an electrical engineer at the Randwick Tram workshop.
At this time the Australian forces were in the early weeks of the Gallipoli campaign. Disembarked in the dark two miles north of their intended landing point the ANZACs struggled up precipitous hillsides in the face of stiff enemy opposition. Little progress was made beyond the gains of those first days and the Allied assault soon descended into trench warfare. Mellings may well have been inspired by the exaggerated and glowing newspaper reports of the 25th April Landing and the exploits of his fellow Australian countrymen.

With losses mounting at Gallipoli the A.I.F. wasted no time in embarking re-enforcements, Mellings leaving Sydney with the first contingent of the 19th Battalion on the HMAT Ceramic 5 weeks later on 25 June 1915. There were 32 Officers and 980 Other Ranks on-board. Assigned to B Company he was shipped through Alexandria and Lemnos before landing at Gallipoli at 1300hrs on 21 August 1915. It hadn’t yet occurred to the high command that it would be safer to land men at night.
Now known as “Jack” or "poor little Jack" to his battalion mates, the sight before him must have been baffling. The beach was still part of the frontline with the Turks regularly shelling and sniping the newly arrived soldiers and the supply barges. The hillsides facing him were a nest of burrows and crude shelters where command and reserves tried to stay safe. The sounds of war carried down from the peaks above them. Thousands of Australians had already died in this flawed campaign which was now at a stalemate, particularly after the attrition of the Australians famous attack on Lone Pine on 6 August. Lone Pine was to be the last major assault by the ANZACs at Gallipoli.

After landing the 19th was quickly moved to the Russell Hill position and then to Popes Post on 18 September. They would remain here for four months and endured constant rifle and artillery fire. One of the furthest outposts of the ANZAC position, casualties were taken almost every day. Conditions at Gallipoli were now deplorable and unhealthy. There was little water and the food rations were inadequate by any standard. Diseases such as diarrhoea, dysentery, enteric fever and cholera were rife and as many men were being hospitalised for ill heath as for battle wounds. The hundreds of unburied bodies made for unsanitary conditions. The weather was also turning cold as the European winter approached.
Jack succumbed to the weather on 9 October while at Popes Post, falling ill with tonsillitis so severe he was taken offshore to hospital in Malta for a month. He returned to duty on 19 October as the British began considering evacuation from the Peninsula. The position had become untenable with victory unlikely and a brutal winter approaching. Men were still in summer clothing. A particular heavy storm with freezing rain struck the Peninsula on 16 November and snow followed on 27 November. British troops froze in the trenches.

On 8 December the British War Cabinet made the decision to evacuate the Peninsula. General Sir Charles Munro had anticipated the decision and a plan was already in operation.
Genuine fears were held that this could result in casualties as high as 25%. An Australian staff officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Brudenell White, devised a plan to gradually withdraw men and equipment over two nights while convincing the Turks that everything was normal. The troops carried out 'silent stunts' to trick the Turks. Long periods of quiet were organised. A remote firing rifle became famous and a game of cricket was played on 17 December at Shell Green in full view of the Turks.
The 19th Battalion itself began making plans for evacuation on the 15th December and the first echelon of 430 men left the trenches on 18 December at 5.30pm to embark for Lemnos. The last of the 19th Battalion left the trenches on the evening of 19 December and the following day they were in camp at Mudros on Lemnos Island. Jack had watched the HMS Cornwallis and other ships shelling the beach to destroy abandoned stores, ammunition and equipment. The enemy appeared to have had no inkling of the evacuation.
Amazingly the ANZAC evacuation suffered one casualty and that only by accident.
650 Australians had died at the Landing of 25 April, none during the evacuation of this futile campaign to shorten the war. Mellings had answered the greatest challenge ever asked by his country and he was finally going to get a crack at the Germans.

The exhausted Australians went straight into camp at Mudros for rest and recovery. The conditions were basic but they were out of the firing line and some relief came from the availability of fresh fruit, vegetables and eggs. Comfort packages were also available from Australia. The YMCA set up tents for comfort, hot chocolate and amenities to enable letter writing to home. The presence of the female Australians nurses also brightened their day. The 19th then moved to Egypt arriving Alexandria 7 January 1916. They were entrained to Tel-el-Kebir 50 miles south of Cairo where they completed the camp and began training and re-organisation.

High command were concerned that the Turks would attack the vital Suez Canal and so positioned the 5th and 6th Brigade of the A.I.F. on the eastern side of the waterway. On 19 January Jack was stationed at the designated defensive position Hill 353 which became known as “Australia Hill”. Other battalions named their positions “Gundagai Post”, “Lithgow”, “Mount Kembla” and “Sheep Dip”. Nothing came of this deployment, but the authorities were at least glad to have kept these Diggers out of the markets and brothels of Cairo.

By early March they were informed of a move to the European theatre, and were addressed on 12 March by Lt. General Birdwood who spoke to the men on discipline and behaviour in France and their relationship with the French people. They were on the move to Alexandria on 17 March arriving in Marseilles 23 March. There were no camps there so Jack was bustled aboard a freight wagon for a 60 hour train ride north. The men were enthralled by the verdant countryside and the warm and welcoming nature of the French people who saw the Australians as saviours.

The men were glad to see the last of Egypt and its heat, sand, dust, flies and disease.
They did not know it but they were headed into worse.

The 5th Brigade was at first taken into the Aire-Hazebrouk sector west of Armentières, the 19th to the village of Boesseghem. Armentières was considered a quiet sector where the men were able to enjoy food and wines at the local cafés. The Germans had been halted in their drive to the channel ports and Paris and had now adopted a defensive strategy. It was the Allies task to dig them out. British had plans for a major offensive on the Somme.

The 19th moved out to Strazeele on 9 July and then entrained to Amiens to ready for the upcoming Battle of Pozières. This action was a set piece within the broader British Somme Campaign that had commenced 1 July 1916 and was set along the axis of the Somme River in France. Its broader intentions were to break the deadlock of trench warfare and to drive the Germans out of France. Pozières protected the important high ground of Pozières Ridge and access towards the next German stronghold at Thiepval. Germany had held most of the high ground from the outset and had every intention of keeping it. They had strongly fortified Pozières and established elaborate trench systems and ammunition reserves. They expected the British to come, they just didn’t know the start date.

The 5th Brigade was moved from Albert to billets at Walloy-Baillon on 20 July carrying out fighting practice and drills. Two days later they marched into the “Brickfields” just north of Albert and bivouacked for a further two days as the 1st Division A.I.F. began their assault of Pozières on 23 July. The Australian attack on Pozières was mostly successful with the village and surrounds taken but at a terrible cost. 23,000 Australians were casualties. The German retaliatory artillery bombardment is held as the worst encountered by any Allied soldiers throughout the course of the war. The artillery “hate” was compounded by relentless German counter-attacks.

Jack moved towards the frontline from the Brickfields on 24 July through Sausage Gully on the eastern side of the Albert-Bapaume Road beyond Tara Hill. Jack saw that it was thriving with reserve troops, horses, transport limbers, ammunition, timber, engineering stores and cook-houses. The many wounded were hurried out through here as well. The area was often shelled by the enemy searching for the Allied troops and materièl. The 19th then moved into the frontline trenches at 9pm on the night of the 25th relieving the 11th Battalion that had entered the fight three days earlier. Their haggard appearance shocked many of the waiting Australians as they passed.

Jack was now a witness to this newly mechanised form of warfare and the destructive power of ranged artillery fire. Shrapnel tore men to pieces. Trenches were shattered and destroyed denying the men what little protection they could seek below the metal storm. The air was filled with fumes and dust, the ground stinking of human remains and human waste. It was a man-made hell.

Jack came under very heavy shellfire at 1245hrs on 27 July as the Germans sought to inflict casualties and to destroy the frontline trenches. They bombarded the 19th with every calibre and every form of shell in their inventory including poison gas and tear gas (lachrymatory) shells. Jack was wounded at this time but remained on duty in the line.

Around midnight the Brigade responded by moving forward 200m from the original front line to establish a new line where the enemy guns were not registered. The 19th then dug an advanced fire trench along the tramline northeast of the village for a planned attack by the 20th.

War Historian Charles Bean risked life and limb to visit the 19th Battalion line at the Tramway and was shocked by the appearance of the troop stationed there:
“The men were dreadfully tired. They had been in for seven days and were nearly at the end of their powers. They have simply had to hang on in the line cut by the German barrage. Everywhere were blackened men – torn and whole, dead for days.”

At 10pm on the night of 3 August the 19th was finally relieved from the front line by the 25th Battalion. They moved back to Sausage Gully for hot food and rest although still harassed by the German artillery. Jack came out to Tara Hill exhausted then to Pernois 25 miles west of Amiens. He enjoyed a long hot shower and a change of uniform.

All were grateful just to have survived this carnage. The Pozières campaign had been hard on the 19th – 3 Officers killed, ten wounded. 440 Other Ranks killed, wounded or missing. Sadly the number of Gallipoli “originals” killed continued to grow. They had nonetheless been determined to succeed at their first offensive on the Western Front. The A.I.F. rewarded Mellings for his duty by promoting him to the rank of Lance Corporal.

Their fortnight rest over the 19th filed back into the line at Pozières to hold those hard fought gains of the past weeks. They worked to improve the trenches and fortifications always under harassing fire. It was noted with appreciation that the German snipers were not firing on the stretcher bearers as they moved under a white flag around No Mans Land looking for the wounded.

The Australians then spent September and October in the line in the quieter Ypres sector in Belgium before being brought back to the Somme. As trying as Jack’s time had been he was to be tested again by the harshest European winter in 40 years and more battlefield suffering.
Arriving firstly at Poperinghe Jack was able to enjoy a few of the comforts they had been denied while in action in France. The best was supplementing his army rations with fried eggs and chips washed down by beer and the local wine. Newspapers and the presence of other units fuelled the rumour mill. Most thought they were here to make preparations for lengthy and peaceful winter quarters. They were wrong.

The rains had begun in September and so much of Jack’s time was spent improving trenches and the drainage system. These low lying areas of Flanders had been a medieval swamp drained over the centuries by the careful management of the farmers. The continuous destructive shellfire began to destroy the drainage, the floors of trenches often having to be lined with wooden duckboards to allow the men to stand clear of the freezing water. Mud would become the enduring memory of this winter.

Despite the appalling losses and the encroaching winter Allied commander Field Marshall Douglas Haig remained committed to a breakthrough on the Somme. This was bad news for the A.I.F. as they knew that Haig now considered them amongst the best fighting divisions.
Jack spent a week at the frontline again attempting to improve the trench conditions which were deteriorating in the wet weather. Mud was up to their knees in places.

Wooden duckboards were laid on the floor of the trenches to improve the drainage and lift their feet out of the water. The cold, wet and miserable conditions were compounded by the inevitable difficulties of the carriers to bring hot meals up from the field kitchens. By the time it arrived it was a cold gelatinous mess. Reheating the meals was not possible as fires were forbidden in the trenches for fear of attracting enemy artillery. Enemy fire, wet clothes and boots, mud, freezing weather, poor food – this wasn’t war service, it was a cruel punishment.

The 19th rotated in and out of the frontline for several more weeks before being marched out to the train station at Ypres on 6 October. They went into billets at Steenvoorde 19 kilometres west of Ypres. They were awaiting Haig’s next orders. Still short of his much coveted “breakthrough” Haig called on his best divisions to return to the Somme to crack the German frontline open and to take Bapaume and beyond. The unsmiling Australians marched south to his orders.

After Gallipoli and Pozières the Australians now had a healthy disrespect and some bitterness towards the British High Command and resented being sent back to the Somme for another pointless offensive. They also knew that winter was closing in.

On 26 October Jack lined up on the roadside at Ailly Le Haut Clocher to board a slow, noisy French Army motor lorry for transport back to the Somme. The billets along the way, mostly barns, were dirty, drafty and full or vermin. Autumn rain fell on their shoulders. Men began to be evacuated from sick parade with chest colds and trench foot.

Reinforcements were drying up and so at this time Jack voted in the Australian Conscription Referendum. Narrowly defeated overall, the prevailing sentiment of the fighting men was against military conscription. They did not want anyone alongside them that didn’t have a desire to fight, and secondly they wouldn’t wish this lifestyle on their worst enemy.

Haig had planned operations for autumn 1916 to maintain the pressure on the enemy. The operations conducted late October through November were to become known as the Battle of Flers, named after a small village close to the action.

Jack fell ill on 1 November and was sent to hospital in France for two weeks. The reason is unknown but he had the good fortune to miss a miserable four day stint in the frontline where approaches to the front included mud up to two feet deep in places. The conditions were described in the Battalion Diary as: ”… very wet, heavy rain and very cold.”

He also had the good fortune to miss the attack on Flers on 14 November.
The Battle of Flers could well be considered a lesson on how not to conduct assaults with cobbled together units suffering from extreme fatigue in unfavourable conditions. The weather had also become a dominant factor in the war, this winter considered the coldest in living memory. Charles Bean described the conditions here as the worst ever encountered by the A.I.F. The men of the 19th were burdened with their greatcoat, one blanket, waterproof sheet and, if they were lucky, a sheepskin vest. They also carried 200 rounds of ammunition, 24 hours of emergency rations, two Mills bombs and four sandbags. That, plus the mud clinging to their boots, puttees and clothes.

The 19th went into the attack with a strength of 451 all ranks. They went in directly behind the barrage and captured 500 yards of the German frontline which it was to hold while subsequent waves of Australians leap-frogged toward the enemy support trench. The job was done but the losses were atrocious. Of the 451 men that had gone forward in the attack at Flers on 14 November only 80 answered roll call when relieved 48 hours later. Jack returned on 15 November to a battalion that had ceased to be an effective fighting unit. The attack achieved nothing and the ground was lost to German counter-attacks.

At the same time President Woodrow Wilson of the USA declared war on Germany. He had tried for three years to remain neutral, but allowed the country to profit from the war. The USA loaned vast sums of money and provided all of the matèriel of war to the Allies. His hand was forced when the German Navy began unrestricted submarine warfare on shipping. More particularly Germany was discovered attempting to engage Mexico into the conflict against the USA in return for lost territories.

At 9.30am on 12 April Jack marched with the 19th north through Pozières and Bapaume to the Noreuil sector.

Germany had squandered its reserves on the Somme and at Verdun. However there existed the possibility of the collapse of the Russian Front which would release over 500,000 troops. Germany then adopted a new defensive posture from February 1917. They had not wasted the winter and now withdrew along almost the entire front to behind a heavily fortified position known as the Hindenburg Line which was actually a number of trench lines that created defence in depth. They lay waste to the ground that their armies ceded and took up trenches, pillboxes and fortified defence lines on elevated terrain behind masses of impenetrable barbed wire. Openings in the wire were only to funnel attacking forces into killing zones covered by enfilading machine guns.

To cover the withdrawal of their forces the Germans fortified and manned a number of villages on the approaches to the Hindenburg Line as rear-guard garrisons. Noreuil was one of those, as was Bullecourt.

Haig and General Hubert Gough began 1917 as they had finished 1916, throwing their men against well-armed and well prepared enemy positions. The exception was First Bullecourt where the Australians were ordered to attack without a preliminary bombardment, Gough relying on a new secret weapon, the tank, to provide mobile artillery support.

Gough hurriedly planned an attack on Bullecourt for 10 April which included the Anzac Corps. Tanks were to be used for the first time in combat. The Australians of the 4th Division filed into the line and took up a position behind a low railway embankment south of the village ready for hop-over at 4.30am. Light snow blanketed the fields and the Australians clearly stood out in their khaki. The tanks screeched and roared as they approached the starting line struggling to make more than walking pace. Some got lost.

As dawn appeared a message came forward that the tanks would not arrive and the attack was called off. For the Australians lying in No Mans Land there was no other recourse but to withdraw. Their own Brigadier ran out calling:
“Go back for your lives. Back to Noreuil.”

In a remarkable display of casual indifference over 1500 Diggers rose and retired in full view of the enemy. It was reported that they streamed back:
“ .. like a crowd leaving a test match.”
Mercifully snow began to fall and partly disguised their withdrawal.

Hopes of rest were dashed later that day when the Australians were told that the attack was to proceed the following morning. They were back at the jumping off point by 3.30am on 11 April. All tactical surprise had been lost. The enemy was waiting.

Of the 12 tanks assigned to the attack only two would reach Bullecourt for the attack, the others incapacitated early by shellfire or mechanical failure. Exposed to murderous machine gun and artillery fire the infantry had no chance and were forced to withdraw back to their own lines. By 7.21am it was acknowledged the attack was a complete failure.

There was insufficient planning put into First Bullecourt which was implemented with an indecent haste. The Australians prevailed and some units entered the village, but determined German counter attacks drove them out and across open fields back to their own lines. Many others found themselves surrounded and without ammunition to continue the fight.

First Bullecourt accounted for the largest number of Australian soldiers captured in the entire war. It was a disaster. The 4th Australian Brigade suffered 2,258 casualties of the 3,000 men in the attack and the 12th Australian Brigade suffered 909 casualties.
First Bullecourt shook the confidence of the Australians in their British command. Their failings were obvious to everyone.

Despite this failure Gough wanted another attack on Bullecourt. Like Haig, he intended to do the same thing and expect a different result. To attack, again, on a narrow front with deep objectives and relying on an untested machine.

The 19th Battalion had now been brought into Noreuil for this purpose. By 1130hrs on 13 April Jack was in the line with B Company on the sunken road left of Noreuil close to the ruins of the village. As they held this position the Germans were massing their own forces for a large counter-attack on the morning of 15 April. They planned to destroy as much of the Allied force and equipment as possible before withdrawal to behind their own Hindenburg Line defences. The Germans managed to recapture the village for a time before the 5th Brigade (Jack) returned the favour and counter-attacked. The 19th Battalion fought vigorously, allowing the Germans to advance within 150 yards before bringing all of their Lewis Guns and rifles to bear. The Germans lost heavily and retired.

The 19th remained at Noreuil in support and in the frontline through to April 20 before being withdrawn to billets at Vaulx. The exhausted men were allowed to rest for several days before 3 days of Brigade strength attack rehearsals were conducted. The Australians were looking to learn from the experiences to improve their success and reduce losses. Those few days in the Lagnicourt campaign had cost the 19th Battalion 13 killed and 56 wounded. They had fought well under very difficult conditions, and looked forward to the onset of spring. They also understood that a renewed spring campaign was imminent.

Jack was back in the line at the Sunken Road at Noreuil by the end of the month. The 19th spent the time conducting patrols and reconnaissance of the enemy lines before going over the top again on 3 May for what would be known as Second Bullecourt.

Gough made his second attempt now to take Bullecourt while the British attacked Arras again.
Jack went over the top at 3.45am on 3 May and was soon passing the bodies of comrades killed the month before. Many were seen gruesomely draped over the German wire. He was lucky to the survive devastating machine gun fire which killed many of the 19th’s officers and NCO’s in the earliest stages of the attack as they reached the unbroken German wire entanglements. They entered the enemy line and fiercely resisted enemy attempts to dislodge them. The following morning saw some of the bloodiest trench fighting of the war.

When relieved by the 4th Battalion the next day the 19th had again suffered appalling losses. The battalion diary recorded that of the 14 Officers and 550 Other Ranks (OR) that went into the battle, 12 Officers and 347 OR were casualties. 21 were known to be dead, 221 wounded and 117 missing. Later, official records would confirm that 116 men of the 19th Battalion were killed in that action - 20% of their fighting strength.

The British 62nd Division on their left achieved nothing and were forced back to their original lines.

Second Bullecourt ceased on 15 May following almost two weeks of desperate German counter-attacks. They gave up trying to hold Bullecourt and ceded this useless piece of ground to the Australians.

For the Australians there was little to show for the sacrifice except the capture of a small part of the Hindenburg Line. Second Bullecourt would be described by one historian as:
“a small tactically useless piece of ground”.
It cost the A.I.F. almost 7500 casualties. Worse still, the ground was lost by the British in March 1918.

Jack was marched out to Vaulx on 4 May and then to Albert by 8 May. He must have been stunned to have survived this debacle. By 18 May he was in camp at Contray where the battalion rested, reorganised and took on further training. The surroundings here were picturesque and the daily activities included sporting competitions and swimming. By 1 August the 19th Battalion had been heavily re-inforced, their fighting strength at 42 officers and 951 other ranks.

The months prior had seen the French Army suffer grievously in several battles, to the point where the men refused orders to attack and would bleat like sheep to their commanders. Outraged by incompetent leadership and senseless sacrifice, mutinies occurred in 16 French army corps. Thankfully the Germans remained unaware of the mutinies as they could have seized the opportunity for a breakthrough.

Jack played cricket and watched athletics at Biefvillers in late June as the first American combat troops began to land in France. These “doughboys” would not make any substantial contribution to the war until 1918.

1917 would be the bloodiest year of the war as Haig continued his summer campaign along the Western Front. His next campaign, the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as The Battle of Passchendaele, would forever become a metaphor for military incompetence and senseless slaughter. Encouraged by the success at the Battle of Messines (Belgium) in June Haig planned to drive the Germans from the dominant high ground with a forlorn hope to break through to the Belgian coast. It would involve eleven attacks on the German forces around the Ypres salient between the Lys River and the North Sea. The new strategy was to “bite and hold” each point of attack with large forces along narrow fronts. The attacks were also preceded by days of massive artillery bombardment to pound the enemy positions.

The Australians infantry joined the battle which had started on 31 July when they took part in the Battle of Menin Road on 20 September. They were now being used as spearhead troops, the British planners recognising and exploiting their courage and determination to succeed.

Now over two years in service Jack was rewarded with two weeks leave in England 18 August to 7 September. He wasted no time in returning to home and visiting family and friends. The weather was dry and warm and they took the time to record his visit with photographs together. He re-joined the 19th at billets near Arques.

The campaign known as the Third Battle of Ypres had been had been running since June 1917. Alternatively known as the Battle of Passchendaele, it is still a metaphor for senseless slaughter and inept military leadership.

Jack left Arques on 12 September marching to Steenvoorde to resume operations against the enemy. The men of the 19th knew they were headed into danger again.
For the first time, the men were briefed as thoroughly as their officers. The Australian brigades were also organised to advance side by side, not having to trust on unreliable British units to hold their flanks. B Company of the 19th went into the frontline in support of the 20th Battalion which attacked in the Battle of Menin Road on 20 September. The A and D Companies were employed as carrying parties moving stores forward. The attack was a success with the battalions digging in and creating strongpoints from mid-morning. The German retaliatory barrage at 6pm that evening fell heavily on the 19th with many casualties. The only other negative was that the assaulting parties moved forward too eagerly and suffered casualties by getting inside their own barrage.

Jack came out of the line on 22 September and moved back to the Patricia Camp at Wippenhoek where the 19th reorganised and trained until 30 September.

Their next front line action started 4 October when the 19th took part in what would become the Battle of Broodseinde, their objective to take the high ground at this village south of Passchendaele. A howling gale and pouring rain fell on Jack as he moved up into the line. The ground became a sodden quagmire. Mud was knee deep and stepping off the duckboards invited death by drowning.

Jack lay wet and cold at the start line tapes before the 6am zero hour and had to endure a German trench mortar barrage. Unknown to the Australians the Germans had brought up four divisions and were planning their own offensive to retake lost ground. Broodseinde was to be a success and a vital victory. The bite and hold strategy appeared to be working with three small victories in 15 days. Haig was encouraged and ordered an attack on the Passchendaele heights which became known as the Battle of Poelcappelle.

The 19th had been holding the front line on 7 October when B Company was relieved and moved back to the Anzac Spur. The weather had turned foul again and more than an inch (25mm) of continuous rain fell between 4-7 October. The men were exhausted with little sleep or sustenance and many were evacuated due to trench foot. The German artillery searched for the Australians with high explosive, shrapnel and gas shells.

Jack and B Company then moved forward again to join the C and D Companies to occupy the support trenches. B Company was just hours from being relieved on 10 October when Jack’s luck ran out.

From 1915 the Red Cross Society moved amongst the wounded while they lay recovering in French and British hospitals seeking news on missing servicemen. They managed to interview a number of those closest to Jack on that fateful afternoon.
4654 Pte. Eric Archer, a 21 year-old bricklayer from Neutral Bay was closest.
“Mellings – named John – was acting trench QM (quartermaster). Our Company was in support in front of Zonnebeke early in October and we were being shelled. I was lying in the trench and Mellings was sitting across my knees. A shell came and killed Mellings and another
(20 year-old Pte. John Buckland from Kogarah), and wounded an officer a private and the Sergt Major. We put Mellings up on the parapet. We could not bury him while the strafing was going on. He was a good man. His parents were in England, and he was photographed with them when on leave, and was showing me the photograph that morning.
Such was the randomness of shellfire. Mellings was killed outright while Archer was unscathed other than the blast shock.
22 year-old 733 Sgt. Herman O’Neill of Waverley also said of Mellings:
“I met Mellings in Egypt. I had worked with him at the Randwick workshop, and knew him well. He was about 5ft 6” in height, sallow complexion, clean shaved. I had been talking to him just before he was killed. I saw his grave at Ypres. Mellings was one of the best.”
O’Neill would be awarded the Military Medal for his bravery and coolness at Poelcappelle.

Haig finally called off Third Ypres on 10 November. He had kept his forces in the field until this time despite the appalling weather and crippling losses. The campaign would take the name of the village closest to the last objective – Passchendaele.

At one point 3000 British guns here fired 4.25 million shells over a 10 day period. It is estimated that one third of those shells failed to detonate and they are still being recovered by Belgian farmers to this day. As at Flers the artillery barrages fired into this small expanse of low flat plains destroyed the intricate underground drainage. The fields quickly became an apocalyptic expanse of water filled craters filled with debris and the bodies of the fallen. Passchendaele was the worst place on earth.

The British losses were estimated at over 275,000, along with over 36,000 Australians and almost 4,000 New Zealanders, all for two miles of advance in eight weeks.
Field Marshall Haig had by now won a terrible reputation and a nickname as a “Butcher”.
The Germans lost almost 270,000 men. Their reserve strength was now depleted.
In the years after the war no word struck as much fear or dismay amongst Australian servicemen as Passchendaele. 100 years on it is still synonymous with senseless and reckless indifference to casualties with unrelenting horror and suffering. A vivid symbol of mud, madness and senseless slaughter on the Western Front.
Sixty-one Victoria Crosses were awarded in the Passchendaele offensive, nine of those to Australians. Five months later in March 1918 the Germans took the ground back from the British in just three days but their army was a spent force.

In his Memoirs of 1938, the wartime British Prime Minister David Lloyd George wrote:
"Passchendaele was indeed one of the greatest disasters of the war... No soldier of any intelligence now defends this senseless campaign ..."
Esteemed poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote:
“I died in hell. They called it Passchendaele.”
Even German General Ludendorff said later of Passchendaele:
“It was mere unspeakable suffering.”

John’s wife Stella was informed of his death on 13 November 1917. She received small parcels of personal items, his Memorial Plaque and Memorial Scroll over the next 4 years. Being a 1915 enlistment, she also received his three war service medals. The Government paid her a ₤2 per fortnight pension for his loss. Stella survived John until 1931, Audrey till 1970.

No-one should ever forget what men like John Mellings sacrificed for the generations that have followed. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

Lest We Forget.

Author: Geoffrey Todd
15 August 2022

 
Sources:

Attestation Papers 4076 Pte. J.T. Buckland. National Archives of Australia.
Attestation Papers 1738 J.L. Mellings. National Archives of Australia.
AWM London. Lone Pine. A Famous Assault at Lone Pine 1915.
19th Battalion War Diary. Australian War Memorial.
NSW Births Deaths and Marriages.
Bean, C.W. Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18.
Red Cross Society Missing and Wounded Bureau Files, Australian War Memorial.
Carlyon, L. Gallipoli. Pan Macmillan Australia. 2001
Mathews, W. and Wilson D. Fighting Nineteenth. History of the 19th Battalion AIF 1915-1918. Australian Military History Publications. 2011.