Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 883. NASH James Henry                              42nd Battalion
 
James (Jim) Nash was born at Jimboomba on the Logan River. His parents, Isaac and Elizabeth (Betty) moved the family to Kooralgin near Yarraman. When Jim left school, he began work on the family farm as well as timber getting in the forests nearby.
 
Jim Nash travelled to Brisbane to enlist on 15th October 1915. His elder brother Isaac had enlisted two months previously. Jim told the recruiting officer he was 19 years and 10 months old; a timber getter from Yarraman. Being under the age of 21, Jim had brought with him a form signed by both parents giving their permission for Jim to join the AIF. Jim named his mother, Elizabeth Nash of Kooralgin, Yarraman Creek as his next of kin.
 
Jim reported to camp at Enoggera to be placed in a depot battalion before being allocated to a regular unit. During this time, Jim fell foul of the authorities on several occasions for being absent from camp or parade. In March of 1916, Jim was granted a five day pre embarkation leave to visit his family at Yarraman and attend a sendoff by the community. He overstayed his leave by three days.
 
Jim was eventually allocated to a new battalion which was being raised in Queensland; the 42nd Battalion. The battalion was destined to be part of a new division, the 3rd Division which was to be raised in England. After travelling to Sydney by train, the 42nd battalion boarded the “Borda” in Sydney on 6th June 1916. The embarkation roll shows Private James Nash of Yarraman, a member of “D” Company. Jim had allocated 4/- of his 5/- a day pay to his mother. The battalion landed at Southampton on 23rd July 1916 and went into camp at Larkhill on Salisbury Plain.
 
The 3rd Division was being trained as a fully functioning unit of over 20,000 men, most of whom had come directly to England from Australia. The divisional commander, Major General John Monash set a rigorous syllabus of training and he expected every man from brigade commanders down to lance corporals to be totally familiar with their role in a major battle. Monash took a personal interest in his men’s training and it is even recorded that when he came across a group of pioneers digging a practice trench, he dismounted and demonstrated the best way to swing a pick and shovel; he was after all a qualified civil engineer.
 
Monash had also come to the attention of the King, George V. The King travelled down from London on the royal train to Larkhill. Monash, not willing to let an opportunity go past ,had the entire division take part in a march past while he and the King sat astride their horses and chatted amiably between salutes. While the 3rd Division was enjoying royal patronage, the other four division of the AIF were heavily involved in the Somme campaign on the western front. There was a degree of animosity directed to the “Larkhill Lancers” who had yet to face the enemy.
 
The 3rd Division, en masse, crossed the English Channel at the end of November 1916. The various brigades, supported by their own artillery, trench mortar battalions and machine gun battalions immediately went into front line duties along the French / Belgian border. For most of the winter and early spring of 1917, the division sharpened its skills with trench raids. After the failure of Bullecourt on the Hindenburg Line in France in April 1917, the other four divisions of the AIF moved north and joined the 3rd in Belgium.
 
The British Commander, General Douglas Haig planned to conduct a totally British campaign, (which included Dominion troops), in the Ypres salient in Belgian Flanders aimed at spearing through the German defenders to the Belgian ports on the English Channel. To do so, the plan called for a series of battles in the summer and autumn of 1917, each of which created a stepping stone to the next objective. The first of these stepping stones was a ridge line which was occupied by the enemy and overlooked the ground that was to be used for the build up of British forces. The ridge ran almost due south from a position just outside Ypres, where spoil from a railway cutting had been dumped (the famous Hill 60) towards the village of Messines and on to Warneton on the French border.
 
The preparations for the Battle of Messines were carefully planned. Large scale models of the terrain to be covered were constructed and all troops who were to take part, which included Jim and the rest of the 42ndBattalion, were walked through the models to familiarize themselves with their objectives. The general in charge at Messines had three and a half million artillery shells at his disposal which would be fired in the days leading up to the attack. In addition, British and Australian tunnellers had been undermining the Messines Ridge for almost 18 months and had placed underground charges in tunnels directly underneath the German defences.
 
On the night of 6th June 1917, the men of the 42nd Battalion moved up to the start tapes which had been laid by the intelligence officers in preparation for the signal to commence the advance. At 3:10 am on the 7thJune, 19 of the underground mines beneath the Messines Ridge were fired simultaneously. It was the largest man made explosion in history and the noise could be heard in London.
 
Two Australian Divisions were included in the order of battle for the attack at Messines. The 3rd Division AIF had responsibility for the northern sector of the front while the 4th Division was tasked with attacking the second line of German trenches, the Oosstaverne Line, behind the village of Messines itself. The 3rdDivision’s advance was virtually flawless in its execution and the “Larkhill Lancers” gained grudging respect from the rest of the AIF. Significant gains were made at Messines but there was still heavy fighting over the coming weeks as the Germans attempted to retake the ground they had lost.
 
On 31st July, the 42nd and 43rd Battalions were tasked with mounting a diversionary attack against the southern end of the Messines Ridge at Warneton. It required a particularly difficult manoeuvre in which the 42nd would wheel around the end of the ridge while the 43rd held its ground. Sometime during the attack, Jim was reported missing. This was soon amended to killed in action. There are no details of the circumstances of Jim’s death available but it is most likely that he was killed by artillery fire and as his body lay on the battlefield, further artillery explosions covered his remains.
 
Jim Nash’s remains were never located. He is one of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave. Their names are inscribed on the Portland Stone Tablets under the arches of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in the city of Ypres.
Since 1928, with only the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign. The ceremony, which draws large crowds concludes with the laying of wreaths, the recitation of the ode, and the playing of the Last Post by the city’s bugle corps
The commemoration of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian war artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting, which now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, toured Australia during the 1920s and 30s and drew huge crowds. The painting remains the War Memorial’s most prized piece of art work.