Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

This is the story of one man's experiences during World War One; my grandfather, Tobias (Toby) Lawrence St. John Adams, who was born in November 1887 in Sydney. It is a story which very nearly was not written because no-one in my family had been told of the existence of the diary which he kept from the day he left Adelaide until his safe return after the war.
In 2006 it became necessary to put the house of my parents, Mansell ( Mick ) and Jane Adams, on the market when they moved into a Care Facility. Dad had always found it hard to part with anything and it was a huge task to clean out his large garage. It was sheer luck that I found the five, old pencil-written diaries in the bottom of a box of old newspapers. Toby had kept a daily diary from 31st May 1916 until 9th August 1919 in which he wrote about his experiences and observations of his time away from home. It was a long and time-consuming task to read through the diaries and transcribe them; Toby's pencil was not always sharp and after almost 100 years, some of the writing was very faint and quite difficult to read.
At the outbreak of WW 1 Toby was married to my grandmother, Louisa Ada Hockley and had one son, Lawrence (Lawrie). The family had lived at Campbelltown but moved to a house in Forest Ave., Forestville in 1916, probably so that Ada would be nearer to family members when Toby went overseas.
Like many young Australian men, Toby was not called-up but rather enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces. He passed the medical examination on 6th January 1916 and swore the Oath of Allegiance in Adelaide on 20th January 1916.
On 31st May 1916 he boarded H.M.A.T. "Seuvic" at Outer Harbor; the ship dropped anchor at Plymouth, England on 21st July, a journey of just over 7 weeks. His brother Mick ( Mathias ) had also enlisted and the two brothers met up within a few days of Toby's arrival in England. They were to meet up at intervals during the war, both in England and in France.
Toby remained in England until 25th November 1916, when the "Inventor" docked at Le Havre after a very rough eleven hour crossing of the English Channel, a crossing which normally took only five hours. During the crossing most of the horses and men suffered from sea-sickness and there were no sleeping facilities in which the men could rest.
A Sergeant with the 11th Field Ambulance, part of Toby's responsibility was caring for the horses which belonged to the Ambulance Corps. This involved not only feeding, exercising and grooming the horses, but also ensuring that they had a safe, dry place to sleep and that any wounds they suffered were dressed; not an easy task on a battle-field where there were no stable blocks or tack rooms.


Although Toby did not call it by name, he was involved with the battle of Passchendaele, sometimes called the Third Battle of Ypres, which raged from 31/07/17 until 6/11/17. His accounts of what he experienced during those months are some of the most graphic entries to be found in his diaries.
Between periods of fighting and dealing with casualties there were periods of leave and Toby used every day at his disposal to explore wherever he happened to be. It is very easy to trace most of his trips, either in France, England or Scotland with the aid of Google maps and maplandia. He was careful about recording where he'd been and what he'd seen and detailed information about all those places is easily found on the internet. I think perhaps I inherited my love of travel and exploring new places from him!
Now that I have read the diaries there are many things I would like to talk to my grandfather about. He didn't write much about his mates and I know they would have been an important part of his life. Also it seems that to a large extent the soldiers had to find their own food and make their own sleeping and transport arrangements; if the army wanted them to move from place to place they usually had to walk. The weather was of great importance as it had not only a huge impact on a soldier's life but also on the job of caring for the horses; he wrote much about the effects of snow, ice, mud, rain and extreme heat.
Receiving letters and parcels from home was a cause for celebration; Toby kept track of how many letters he wrote, even jotting down a list of beginnings so that his letters would not always begin in the same way. He numbered the letters he received from home and took them home with him at the end of the war; unfortunately these have been lost except for one which he wrote on 9th Feb 1919 from Bienncourt, Somme. In this letter to his wife he talks about a dream in which he arrived back at Outer Harbor and saw Ada and their son waiting on the wharf for him.
As a little girl I knew that my grandfather had been to the war; we watched him march on Anzac Day and sometimes he would teach me a few bars of a song or a few French phrases. But he never spoke of the war and I knew nothing of his diaries until the day I found them. In transcribing the diaries I have left them as they were written; there are some grammatical and syntax errors but I have chosen to let Toby's words speak for themselves.
Joan Möller nee Adams,
Adelaide, April 2013.