Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Extract from Book by Ian Lewis (grandson of EA Lewis)..."an Olive branch in the Jarrah Forest"

In 1915 as World War One entered its second year the Empire recruiting program reached out
to Australia, calling for young and able men to join the war effort in Europe. Jack’s older brother
Herbert Lewis enlisted to fight and represent Australia and the Empire in the far-off War. It was
generally believed that the war would be over in a matter of months and that the British and
Australian lads would be victorious and back home soon.
But as history records that was not the case and the terrible war went on for four enduring
years.
As the war continued, the need for more recruits was obvious and the enlisting was aggressively
promoted as a patriotic must-do for young able men! The community of Jarrahdale responded
with many of the young men enlisting to join the war effort. (One young timber worker, Burnett
Herbert Lawson, left his work at Jarrahdale and travelled to Bunbury to enlist. He was killed in
action on the 3rd November 1916. The name Lawson and the outcome of this soldier come up
again in Ernest’s later life).
So Just a year after Herbert’s enrolment, Jack, together with his two older brothers Reginald
and Arthur and their brother-in-law Thomas Sheehan, all followed Herbert and enlisted to fight
in the war. The date was 20th of March 1916 and Jack was just one week away from turning
18 years old he was the youngest and smallest of all the eligible Lewis boys. Measured by
the enlistment team Jack was five feet four inches and recorded his religion as Wesleyan.
[Australian Military Force. No. 5040, No. 5039, No. 5087]. Some military records also show
Jack as a Methodist which is in contradiction to the Catholic influence that was evident in his
upbringing.
The Western Australian AIF recruits, underwent a brief four months training programme aimed
at providing skills in war tactics and fighting technics. The training was held at the specially
established army training grounds at Blackboy Hill Camp, east of Midland. An enlisted soldier
was paid the sum of five shillings a week, of which three shillings were sent to his mother
and father or next of kin. In today’s money that is fifty cents and thirty cents! Their pay was
increased by a shilling once they were on active service and while that seems so little in today’s
money, the Australian soldiers were amongst the highest paid during World War One.
On Friday 14th July 1916, just days before being shipped off to the war, members of the AIF
from the Jarrahdale recruits, including Jack, his two brothers and their brother-in-law Thomas
Sheehan, went on excursion from Blackboy Hill training camp back to Jarrahdale to participate
in a shooting contest at the local rifle range. From the scores of that competition recorded in the
local media of the day, Jack Lewis was far from being a competent shot. He scored the least
number of target hits on the three distant measured shoots and was last overall in the field of
20 enlisted men and 19 local Jarrahdale men.
With Jack’s poor shooting results, his father and his other brothers must have feared for the
young soldier, who would soon be relying on his rifle and a keen aim to survive the war ahead.
But there was no time for any further training or shooting practice and just five days after that
shooting competition, on 18th July, Jack and other members of the 13/28th Battalion sailed
from Fremantle, Western Australia on board the ‘Seane Bee” bound to offboard at Folkestone,
England.
Jack and his brother Arthur were shipped on the 18th November 1916 to Etaples in France, on
board the troop ship SS Victoria. The oldest brother, Reginald Lewis was shipped to the war
front, two weeks earlier on the 2nd November on board the SS Henrietta.
On the battle fields Jack was often assigned the duty of message runner, a task allocated to
the fastest running recruits. That role required that Jack run information from the front line back
to the headquarters and return with messages. A runner was considered the most dangerous
of jobs and it required a soldier to manoeuvre through the battle lines. It is suggested through
family hearsay that while in France, Jack jumped out of a two-storey house to avoid capture.
He damaged his knees from the jump but managed to accelerate on foot and escape.
The following is a brief outline of Jack’s service history taken from the records in the Australian
Military Force File No. 5040.
Private Ernest Alfred Lewis embarked at Fremantle, Perth H.M.A.T. A48 “Seane Bee” on July
19th, 1916 and sailed to England. A member of the 28th Battalion, he was sent to the war front
in France on the 18th November 1916.
During 1917 he was admitted to a field hospital with an injury to his right knee and later
returned to the front.
On the 12th April 1917 Private E.A. Lewis was penalised 48 hours pay for failing to obey an
order to wear his box respirator.
Private E.A. Lewis was returned to England in June 1917 and hospitalised with trench fever.
On the 27th of December 1917 he returned to France.
On the 12th of April 1918 Private E.A. Lewis was once again penalised, this time 21 days’ pay.
His offence was to “go out with the intention of shooting game”.
Jack was penalised and fined for shooting game in the forest of France and yet his purpose
in being there was to shoot other people. He would have been annoyed at this penalty as
back in Australia, kangaroo and game shooting for sport and food was a common and even a
necessary event.
The War records available for individual soldiers focus on attendance, sickness or injury and
any unit transfers yet these tell little of the battles and conditions that Jack and his brothers
endured at the war front. It is not until you read the recorded memories and historical accounts
of each battle, that the real picture of the horror and hardship that faced soldiers each day
294
becomes clear. Any of the earlier thoughts held by the Lewis boys, that the war was going to be
an adventure would have been lost with the reality of the hell on earth that the war presented
on their arrivals at the front.
In 2014, a chance meeting in France by the author’s brother-in-law, Vince Cusworth and
David Hobbs revealed a story of the war and how Jack Lewis and David’s father also named
David Hobbs had endured a horrible event together. Both Jack Lewis and David Hobbs were
accompanied by their own brothers Reginald Lewis and John Hobbs. The two sets of brothers
were fighting alongside one another from the same section of trench, at the battle of Anvil
Woods during August 1918.
The German forces occupied the hill at Anvil Woods and between the AIF trenches and the
Germans lay the area of ground known as No Man’s land. Many of the AIF soldiers involved in
attacking the German strong hold position on the hill, lay dead or injured in that section of No
Man’s land. At the time when the Lewis and Hobbs brothers were together in the trench, an
injured Australian soldier lay wounded, in the No Man’s land, some 50 metres from the trench.
He was desperately crying out for help. It was an agonising cry of pain and total despair and
Jack and David Hobbs agreed that they would both jump the trench together and attempt to
rescue this poor soldier. They believed that with two men running at least one and hopefully the
two of them would make it back with the wounded soldier.
Jack and David were the younger of the two sets of brothers and while they hatched their plan
and timing, both their elder brothers Reginald Lewis and John Hobbs protested and finally took
an age rank and made it clear to their younger brothers that they were the ones that would to
go over the trench. The rescue plan was extremely risky and both men knew that the chance of
success was at best, a long shot but they also knew that they could not let a fellow Australian
lay injured and in pain if there was half a chance of saving him.
Reginald Lewis and John Hobbs planned that their best time to jump out of the trench was on
the regular gaps in firing as they believed that all the enemy guns were reloading. With one of
those gaps in firing these two valiant men made their move.
Sadly, they were only metres into their rescue attempt when both were gunned down from fierce
and intense machine gun bullets. Both were killed instantly as was the previously wounded
soldier. It was as if the enemy had left the wounded soldier crying for help as a trap, knowing
that the Australians would endeavour to rescue him. Jack and David Hobbs could do nothing
but witness the violent death of their brothers realising that the fatalities could have been
themselves and realising through the vision of the slaughter of their brothers, that the enemy
had set the trap to entice a rescue attempt.
Several days later when fighting ceased enough the younger brothers joined other battle-weary
AIF soldiers to assist with recovering and burying all the dead including their two brave brothers
where they had fallen. War history records state that Reginald was buried 1300 yards east and
900 yards south east of Biaches Woods near Peronne. John Hobbs was buried alongside Reg.
The bravery of this attempt was above and beyond the call of any soldier and the sobering
thought that had both or either of the men been successful they would have been honoured for
that bravery but in dying their story becomes just a small part of the horrors of the War.
Years after the war ended, the graves of Reginald Lewis and John Hobbs were exhumed, and
the two soldiers were reburied again alongside each other in Peronne Communal Cemetery
Extension. Reginald is in plot one Row C, Grave no 33 and Hobbs is buried in the next grave.
The story of the two sets of brothers has been told and retold many times in the Hobbs family
but was never shared by Jack with his family. It may have remained unknown to the Lewis
family but for the chance meeting of two strangers in France in 2014.
There is another family story that Reginald Lewis had been nursed to death by another soldier,
John Rhodes, but the story of the events at Anvil Woods has more evidence. The nursing story
may have been to lighten the sad news that was delivered by Rhodes to Reginald’s wife after
the war ended. It is more likely that Rhodes assisted with the burials and recovered the photos
from Reginald’s body that he later returned to his wife.
It is generally believed that on his return to Australia after the war, Jack was partially blamed by
his father and some other members of the family, for not bringing his brothers back home alive.
This story of Reginald’s demise supports that he may have also borne some personal guilt and
had further blame passed on by his family for Reginalds’ fatal rescue attempt.
After serving out the last three years of the war, Private E.A. Lewis was dispatched back to
Australia on board the troop-carrying vessel the “Ormonde” and is reported to have arrived
home in Fremantle on the 24th July 1919, three years and one week after he left the same port
of Fremantle to fight in the war.
Jack would have been aware as he sailed home, that he was the only enlisted member of his
family returning home from the war. His three brothers, Herbert, Reginald and Arthur had been
killed and all buried in France. Jack’s brother-in-law, Thomas Sheehan was also killed and
buried somewhere in an unmarked grave.
And back home there was even more grief for Jack to endure as he came to terms with the
local loss of other family and friends. While away at the war he had lost his younger sister Ellen
Sheehan, her dying after a tragic fire accident and his grandparents on both sides of his family,
had deceased. Friends and family that he had grown up with, had all changed from loss and
the stresses of war. Many of his mates had not come home, themselves victims of the bizarre
and horrid last four years of war.
There was a huge welcome home event held at the Jarrahdale Hall for the local timber town
lads that did return. That was a brief occasion of celebration and outflowing thanks given that
some of the local families’ sons had survived the terrible war.
At just 21 years of age, Jack Lewis had experienced the worst that war could bring and had
returned to what was a very different family situation than the one that he and his brothers had
left. Dealing with the memories and situations experienced and his knowledge of the war would
have made holding any conversation hard if not impossible. Silence would have fallen on Jack
about the horrid experience of war and more silence from the family on the losses at home.
It was a familiar silence that most returning soldiers and their family carried well into the next
generation. It had been a time too hard to ask about and too sad and painful to speak about.
In September 1919 the Secretary of the Australian Natives Association (A.N.A.) requested and
received a copy of the all hospital admissions for Private E.A. Lewis for lodge purposes. The
secretary of the A.N.A. at that time was his father Joseph Lewis and it is not known why he
had requested the information. [Copy of AIF records Private E.A. Lewis No. 5040 of the 28th
Battalion held by Ian Lewis].
Jack carried a knee injury that he incurred in France throughout his life and it gave him a lot of
discomfort and pain, particularly in his older years. He told his son Kenny that there was some
shrapnel imbedded near his knee but to consider removal by surgery was never an option.
Post war, Jack returned to his employment in the timber industry and was working and living
at Jarrahdale in 1921 when he was listed as a competitor in the town’s annual regional rifle
shoot championship that year. His results in that shoot are recorded in the West Australian
newspaper as being one of the first ten in the higher scores for shots off the 600-yard range.
That was a much-improved score than the poor results he registered before he departed for
war.