Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
# 4620  WILLMER James Harold        31st Battalion
 
James Willmer (his surname in some documents is spelt Wilmer) was born at Laidley in the Lockyer Valley, Queensland. His mother, Eliza, when completing the Roll of Honour Circular stated that James attended school at Laidley North and was a member of the cadets.
 
The Willmer family moved to Glencliffe, outside Kumbia, to take up a selection where young James worked on the family farm. As well as the Kumbia memorial, James is also commemorated on the Toorbul and Donnybrook War memorial at Toorbul Point overlooking Bribie Island where there is a Willmer Street. It is uncertain if James ever had any connection with the Toorbul district. On 6th November 1916, James travelled to Kingaroy to take a train to Gympie and then on to Maryborough to enlist. He reported his age as 22 and stated his occupation as farmer of Glencliffe via Kingaroy. James reported to camp at Enoggera where he spent a short while in a depot battalion before being allocated to the 12th Draft of the 31stBattalion.
 
The 31st Battalion was part of the 8th Infantry Brigade of the 5th Division AIF. The 5th Division was deployed to the Western Front in July 1916 and with hardly any preparation was rushed into an ill-conceived attack against heavy defences at Fromelles which resulted in appalling losses. The 31st Battalion sustained 572 casualties at Fromelles (battalion strength was around 1000) and required a large number of reinforcements to bring the battalion back to full strength. As a result of this situation, the processing of reinforcements from Australia was rushed.
 
Not long after James marched in to camp at Enoggera, he was granted six days pre-embarkation home leave on 22nd November to visit his family and attend to his affairs. The journey to his home would take almost 24 hours. Training at Enoggera was cut short and the 12th draft of reinforcements for the 31stBattalion left Brisbane by train and arrived in Sydney where they boarded the “Demosthenes” on 23rdDecember and disembarked at Plymouth on 3rd March 1917.
 
The reinforcements were sent to the 8th Brigade Training Battalion at Hurdcott in Wiltshire just outside of Salisbury to complete the training that they had missed due to their hasty departure from Australia. While with the 8th Training Battalion, James was sent to a gunnery school to be trained in the use of the Lewis gun, a light machine gun which was being issued to infantry battalions in increasing numbers. He also trained as a signaller and it was in this role that he departed from Southampton on 17th October to march in to the 5thDivision Depot at Havre on the French coast. On 26th October, James was taken on strength by the 31stBattalion.
 
The main thrust of British offensive operations in 1917 took place in the Ypres salient in Belgian Flanders. The campaign had begun in June with a large attack against entrenched defences at Messines Ridge; and was followed up with actions at Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde Ridge before getting bogged down in the mud at Passchendaele. During this time, the 5th Division which was still recovering from the Fromelles fiasco, played only a very minor role. When James joined the 31st, the battalion was preparing to move up to the front around Ploegsteert and Warneton, just south of the village of Messines. As a signaller, James would have been learning how to lay a ladder like network of phone cables which provided multiple pathways for telephone communication between battalion and company headquarters in the event of lines being cut by artillery bombardment.
 
The 31st moved into the front line trenches on 21st November. The purpose of the disposition was to simply hold the line as the weather precluded any notion of actual offensive operations. The 31st war diary contains a quite detailed account of the time spent in the line. Particular reference is given to the weather, usually rain and fog, and the timing of barrages by German artillery and trench mortars which fired projectiles known as pigeons. The work was boring and monotonous and no doubt the entire battalion was glad when they were relieved on 12th December. An account provided to the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Service by Sergeant Bowers, who was in charge of James’ signalling section, states that as the signallers were coming out of the line, an artillery shell landed behind James in the sap, killing him instantly. The other signallers brought James’ body out to the nearby Bethleem Farm Cemetery where he was laid to rest with the battalion chaplain in attendance. The 31st war diary records that during the time in the line at Warneton, the battalion suffered only fatality; James Willmer.
 
When permanent headstones were being erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission in the 1920’s, James’ family chose a simple inscription: REST IN PEACE.