Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
#2167 CAMPBELL John (Jack)            5th Light Horse Regiment / Imperial Camel Corps
 
Jack Campbell was born at Merrill’s Creek near Crow’s Nest outside Toowoomba. The family moved around often as an elder brother, Commerce, had been born in Lismore NSW. By the time that both boys were ready to attend school, the family was living in Atherton, North Queensland. The boys’ father abandoned them and their mother, Jane Ellen Campbell, around 1910. By the time of the outbreak of the Great War, Jane and the two boys were living in King Street, Kingaroy.
Jack journeyed down to Brisbane from Kingaroy on 9th September 1915 to enlist at the Light Horse Depot at Chermside on the outskirts of Brisbane. He advised the recruiting officer he was 18 years and 7 months old and was employed as a labourer. Other sources indicate that Jack had trained as a tinsmith, probably while living on the tin mining fields near Atherton. Jack named his mother, Jane Ellen Campbell, as his next of kin.
Jack was drafted into the 15th reinforcements of the 5th Light Horse Regiment which at that time was fighting at Gallipoli as infantry. The Light Horse reinforcements trained at Chermside and also at the Pine Rivers Show Grounds before travelling by train to Sydney and embarking on the “Orsova” on 11th March 1916. The reinforcements landed at Alexandria in Egypt on 22nd April and proceeded to the Light Horse Training Regiment at Tel el Kabir.
During the early months of 1916, the AIF was blessed with an over abundance of reinforcements as a result of a surge in enlistments once the news from Gallipoli reached Australia. These reinforcements, combined with the veterans from the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign were being reorganized into a force that doubled in size and which would eventually be deployed on the Western Front in France and Belgium.
While this rapid expansion was taking place, Jack was hospitalised with mumps and then influenza and as a consequence was not considered for re-assignment. By the time of his discharge, the four AIF divisions were already in France and fighting at the front. Jack returned to the remount’s depot at Tel el Kabir and then proceeded to link up with the 5th LHR which was about to go into battle at Romani, on the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai. It is unlikely that Jack took part in the Romani action as his file indicates that he was taken on strength just one day before the battle on 4th August 1916.
Romani marked a turning point for the Light Horse and the rest of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. The Turkish forces which had been slowly advancing through the desert along the Mediterranean coast from Palestine were defeated by a combined force of Australian Light Horse and New Zealand Mounted Rifles as well as British Infantry. From that point on, the EEF slowly advanced east as the railway line from the Suez Canal and a vital water pipeline were extended to support the campaign.
The Sinai Desert with its soft sand and scarce water supply was ideally suited to the use of camels. Four battalion strength squadrons, two of which were Australian, were combined to create the Imperial Camel Corps and Trooper Jack Campbell was transferred to the ICC in September 1916. As the railway and water pipeline inched their way across the desert, the Ottoman and German Forces were pushed back, first to El Arish, and then to Raffa on the Egyptian / Palestinian border.
Once the railway and pipeline reached El Arish, the EEF could mount a determined campaign against the defences at Raffa. A series of encircling movements by both mounted troops and infantry began on 10thJanuary 1917. The Camel Corps, supported by the Hong Kong and Singapore Camel Battery firing mountain guns, dismounted for a bayonet charge against a network of redoubts. During this charge, Jack Campbell was wounded in the back and throat.
Dealing with wounded men in the desert presented a number of difficulties, not the least of which was transport. Camels were fitted with a crude basket arrangement that could carry two wounded men, either side of the hump. Because of the camel’s rolling gait, the wounded were subjected to an uncomfortable ride back to El Arish. Jack was taken in by the 1st Light Horse Field Ambulance but unfortunately succumbed to his wounds and died on 11th April. Jack was buried in a temporary cemetery at El Arish but his remains were later exhumed and reburied in the Kantara War Cemetery on the east bank of the Suez Canal
Jane Campbell received a parcel of Jack’s personal effects. A holdall, a housewife, a razor, shave brush, mirror and a broken watch. She was also eligible for a war pension which probably increased upon the death of her elder son, Commerce, three months after Jack’s death.