Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

From Ballarat & District in the Great War
March 26, 2018 

It’s a romantic image: young men heading to war; mates who, filled with the vigour of youth, are off to share a grand adventure. Of course, the reality is far from romantic, and friends who set off to battle all too often fell side-by-side. The famous Pals’ Battalions of the British Army was a tragic testament to this. The men themselves, often led to describe it in the most succinct of terms, still cherished the mateship, the ‘grand companionship,’ above all else.

Ballarat & district certainly had its fair share of stories of friends fighting and dying together, but few came close to the bond of Jack Lamb and Jim Kay, who remained, literally, friends to the end.

James Alexander Kay was the elder of the two lads. He was born at Burrumbeet in April 1893, the first-born son of Hugh Kay and Christina McLeod. He was to be the eldest of their three children. John Lamb, or Jack as he was always to be known, was born three years later on 21 December 1896. Likewise, Jack was the eldest of his family. His parents, William John Lamb and Mary Jane Stuart and their families, haled from County Monaghan in Ireland. The Kay family were more staunchly Scottish in origin.

The boys first became friends whilst attending the Burrumbeet State School. The connection was strong. In fact, so intertwined are their stories I have to be careful not to mix them up and I can never think of one without the other!

Both joined their fathers on the land after leaving school and worked as farmers. They attended the local Presbyterian Church together and became members of the Windermere Australian Natives Association. Jack also played football and cricket for Burrumbeet and the pair became known for their great friendship throughout the district.

With the advent of war it was inevitable that they would enlist together. Jim delayed volunteering until Jack was old enough to be accepted. They travelled to Melbourne and enlisted on 8 September 1916. Both boys easily passed the medical examination, although Jim needed dental treatment. Their physical descriptions, however, helped to tell the two apart. Jim was the taller and heavier – standing 5-foot 10¾-inches and weighing nearly 10 and a half stone. He had a dark complexion and dark brown hair, with grey eyes.

Jack, who was still just 19 years old, was shorter and lighter and he was as fair as Jim was dark with serious blue eyes and fair hair.

Their journey to Europe began on 25 October when they sailed from Port Melbourne onboard HMAT Ulysses with reinforcements to the 6th Machine Gun Company. During the voyage Jim reached his 21st Birthday, and without doubt there would have been a great deal of celebrating amongst the men.

The Ulysses docked at Plymouth three days after Christmas and the young mates marched into Perham Downs camp the next day. The ensuing months were spent in training around the Salisbury Plain, and everywhere Jim went, Jack went, too.

It wasn’t until the 7 September 1917 that they finally sailed for France, Jim having been appointed lance-corporal only a few days before the trip. They were bound for the Ypres Salient, their new unit – the 24th MGC – and the Battle of Passchendaele.

Barely three weeks later they were both dead.

It was the 29 September 1917; Jack and Jim were on the same machine gun in front of the German pillbox known as ANZAC House – a prominent position near Garter Point in Polygon Wood. During the fighting a shell landed alongside the pair burying them together. Several men, including Private Martin Share, raced to help dig them out. But it was all to no avail; they were dead. A number of witnesses stated that there wasn’t a mark on them – they had apparently suffocated. Private Share was one of those who then helped to bury the two young gunners; they were buried where they had fallen.

Andrew McIntyre, a friend from school days, was amongst those who witnessed the events. He took on the responsibility of writing home to the families. Tragic news always seemed easier to bear when the messenger was someone you knew. At least someone from home was with them when they died.

The news quickly spread throughout the Burrumbeet area. The grief seemed compounded by the depth of their true friendship; in death the sadness was doubled.

'...COMRADES KILLED.  BURRUMBEET. Sunday.

A gloom was cast over Burrumbeet on Thursday afternoon, when it became known that two of its young men, Lce-Cpl James Kay and Pte Jack Lamb, had been killed in action in France. They enlisted together, trained together, and were both killed on the same day, 29th September. The trees planted for them in the Avenue of Honor on the Burrumbeet road stand side by side. Much sympathy is felt for the bereaved parents of each soldier...'

Such was the impact of their friendship even other newspapers ran copy of the deaths – the Melbourne Herald sharing a small article headed, “Not Divided in Death.”

A special Sunday evening In Memoriam service was held in the Burrumbeet Presbyterian Church on 28 October. Family and friends of Jack Lamb and Jim Kay, as well as those of Bob Charles, who had been killed on 16 September, gathered together to remember, to share and to give comfort. In front of an alter covered in white and draped with the Union Jack, Reverend R. Jones spoke feelingly to the congregation; he took his text from 2 Samuel 1:25, “How are the mighty fallen in the midst of battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.” He brought their loss into context, and paid tribute to their friendship.

‘…In the United Kingdom of Great Britain there were few homes today where there were not aching hearts owing to the mighty brave and true who had fallen in the defence of our Empire. And now it was Australia's turn to lament, for nearly everywhere some friends had gone. We were beginning as never before to realise the horrors and tragedy of war. Behold how the mighty have fallen! Among them were two young men who associated with that congregation. Gunners J. Kay and J. Lamb sometime ago heard the call of the Empire, and responded to that call, believing that it was their duty to do so. They went to school together, were close companions during their young manhood here, enlisted at the same time, went through their training together, sailed for the distant field of duty together, side-by-side on the bloodstained battlefield. They lived and fought and died together. He noticed that their names were together on the Avenue of Honor between there and Ballarat. David might have said of them as he did of Saul and Jonathan, they were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided. These two affectionate sons and brothers, and brave, true soldiers of our beloved, king, had paid the supreme sacrifice. For greater love, saith He, Hath, no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends…’

After the cessation of hostilities the newly formed Imperial War Graves Commission, greatly aided by teams of soldiers awaiting repatriation home, combed the battlefields looking for the remains of the fallen. Their painstaking efforts at locating, exhuming and attempting to identify the bodies must have seemed like sifting through the ashes after Dante’s inferno. Their work can truly never be fully appreciated given the exigencies of the time in which they worked. Unfortunately, when exhumation work was conducted around ANZAC House, only the remains of Jim Kay could be formerly identified. His body was removed to Oxford Road Cemetery for proper burial. In all likelihood the body of Jack Lamb was discovered at the same time, but, without adequate identification on the body, he would have been re-buried as an “Unknown Soldier of the Great War”; his name was later added to the Menin Gate memorial to the missing of the Salient.

Given the depth of their friendship it seems somehow right that Jim Kay and Jack Lamb were not separated by death, that they were able to undertake the greatest of all life’s adventures together.

To have survived alone would have been heartbreaking.