Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Jack grew up on his father’s selection at Berrico, the second child and first son of the marriage between Oliver Edwards and Mary Ann Parish. As a child, Jack had only a rudimentary education, learning little more than his ABCs before being removed from school to help on the farm. When WW1 broke out, Jack tried to enlist locally, though he was underage. He was eventually successful in Sydney. He trained at Casula in C company Depot Battalion, before being attached to the 20th battalion as part of the 15th reinforcements, two months after enlisting. The 20th had been decimated at Gallipoli.

On the 9th Sept, 1915, the fifteen reinforcements embarked on the HMAT Euripides, a merchant ship that was seized to carry troops between Australia and Britain during the war. They reached Plymouth six weeks later. After six weeks in England, the troops departed from Folkestone on the Princess Henrietta. A couple of days after landing Jack was sick, possibly from the combination of the channel crossing and the forced march, but he returned to the Battalion soon after on the 17th Dec 2016, a month after their attack on Fler. By the time Jack attired at the front his cousin Percy Thompson has already been dead for 18 months.

Jack served on the Western front, in the trenches in France. On their arrival, the new recruits were inspected by the sergeant in change who clearly thought some of them underage.  Although tall, Jack always looked younger than his age, and despite having just turned 18, he was asked to fallout, had his gun taken away, and was designated a stretcher bearer. An ‘SB’ patch was attached to his uniform, which he kept afterwards as a memento. Jack always maintained it stood for ‘Silly Bugger’. Being a stretcher bearer, Jack’s job was to retrieve the dead and wounded from the battlefield during pauses in the fighting. This was done in strict order: Allied wounded, German wounded, Allied dead, German dead.  To help indicate his status as a non-combatant, Jack was also given a white handkerchief to wave, but was nonetheless shot at several times by crazed soldiers from both sides. I presume he also had to carry the wounded to the field hospital and the dead to the graveyard.

In 1917, the 20th was involved in the follow-up of German forces after their retreat to the Hindenburg Line, and was one of four battalions to defeat a counter-stroke by a German force, almost five times as strong, at Lagnicourt. The Battalion took part in three major battles before the year was out, second Bullecourt (3-4 May) in France, and Menin Road (20-22 September) and Poelcappelle (9-10 October) in Belgium. Jack was wounded in action on 20 September 1917 during the Menin Rd action, but returned to the front 3 weeks later, just after Poelcappelle.

The spring of 1918 brought a major German offensive. The 20th Battalion was one of many Australian battalions rushed to stop it, and it encountered some particularly severe fighting when ordered to attack at Hangard Wood on 7 April. With the German Army's last desperate offensive defeated, the 20th participated in the battles that pushed it ever closer to defeat: Amiens on 8 August, the legendary attack on Mont St Quentin on 31 August, and the forcing of the Beaurevoir Line around Montbrehain on 3 October. Montbrehain was the battalion's last battle of the war. It was disbanded on 20 April 1919.

After the war ended, Jack was in no hurry to go home. Volunteers were generally taken on for the duration of the war plus 4 months. Jack stayed a further year in England, working in the quartermaster’s store, getting both influenza and measles towards the end of his tenure. He returned to Australia on the Aeneas in Nov 2019.  He received the British war medal (53587), and the Victory Medal (52122).