Jerrems Family Newsletter
Dear Donald,
Jerrems Journal. In other words, we defer on
previously submitted storylines.
We have a pending follow-up story on Alexander
Nicoll from the January issue.
We are
also holding a story line from Leonore Neary
about
Arthur (b1872), “Aunt Mame”, and Aunty Vi (aged
19).
We also have pictures and story line about
William George Jerrems IV submitted by
Sue Jerrems.
And we have a backlogged story with pictures from
Ray Lloyd’s grandmother Elizabeth and her sister
Alice, Daughters of Samuel Jerrams and Sarah
Pritchard.
So, we are a bit in arrears. Keep the pictures and
stories coming; we will get to them. We love the
Remember Us Series.
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Remember Us from the Great War |
Ray Jerrems, Our Genealogist, Historian
Above is a photo of my grandfather Edward Healy
Smith (sitting) and his brother. My grandfather,
with his trademark lantern jaw, is dressed in the
uniform supplied to him as a member of B Company
in the 13th Field Ambulance Unit. In summary he
served in France in World War l as a stretcher bearer
and was awarded the Military Medal.
But what was the former headmaster of an English Art
School doing in an Australian Army Field Ambulance
unit in the killing fields of France in 1917? Simply, he
had grown up in Templestowe in England in a
strict “Plymouth Brethren” family (the Plymouth
Brethren were what we would now call “conscientious
objectors”). He migrated to Western Australia with his
brother and soon joined up, his concession to his
religious upbringing being that he enlisted in a non-
combative role in the Field Ambulance.
He was probably under no illusion that the job of a
stretcher bearer would be testing, but nothing would
have prepared him for the horror of the war in France. I
cannot say definitely from his war records all the
battles he participated in but I have a note he wrote
when he was resting on the outskirts of Amiens after
the Battle of Villiers Brettoneaux. Later he was
probably also at the Third Battle of Ypres and the Third
Battle of the Somme. The Unit (formed before his
Company joined it) served earlier at Pozieres,
Mouquet Farm, Bullecourt, Messines and
Passchendale.
As an art student he had cycled through these areas
15 years earlier, sketching the cathedrals and other
landmarks. He had won awards for his art. His artistic
temperament was shattered by his wartime
experiences.
One of the only people he ever spoke to about the War
was me, for about half an hour. Here is what he told
me. He said the worst part of his job as a stretcher
bearer was to decide which of the wounded men
could survive their wounds as he threaded his way
between the corpses, the shell holes, the barbed wire
and the wounded. The men who he decided were
beyond help knew that their fate was sealed.
He told me that he had been awarded the Military
Medal (statistically speaking this was awarded to only
approximately one Australian soldier in every 200) for
going out into No Man’s Land under German fire to
rescue wounded Diggers. He went by himself
because nobody else would go. The man with the
lantern jaw (often associated with stubborn people)
had made up his mind, in his words to me he
preferred to go out rather than go insane listening to
the haunting cries of the wounded.
I have not been able to locate the citation for the
Medal, the most obvious way of finding out where he
earned it. However his service record refers to him as
being awarded the MM on 21st April 1918. This
coincides with the first night of the Australians’ attack
at Villiers Brettoneaux, where the Australians incurred
heavy casualties but were spectacularly successful in
achieving their objective of stopping the Germans’ last
major advance. It has been described by some as the
turning point of the War.
The town of Villiers Brettoneux has an almost
legendary status in Australian folk lore. After the War
money donated by school children in Victoria helped
to build the school there. The school was inaugurated
on Anzac Day 1927, and since then every classroom
and the town’s community hall have displayed a sign
that has become legendary in Australia: “N’Oublions
Jamais l’Australie” (Let Us Never Forget Australia).
Australian visitors are warmly welcomed there and the
schoolchildren know “Waltzing Matilda’ by heart. Last
year an Anzac Day ceremony was held near the town,
with huge press coverage.
I suppose that the American equivalent would be the
landing at Omaha Beach in World War 2.
I am relieved that I have finally established where he
earned the medal, with the additional fillip that he
earned it in an action so famous in Australia.
Later he survived a shell explosion but shrapnel,
which could not be removed, lodged in his neck. More
significantly, during the War he suffered bad shell
shock and amnesia. He spent some time in the UK in
hospital and then returned to Australia on a hospital
ship suffering from “debility”. He spent 2 years
clearing trees for rehabilitation. Later he hated any
noise and had a bad temper (my observations). He
came back a completely different person, by all
accounts.
Nowadays we would diagnose my grandfather and
many other returned soldiers as having Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The purpose of relating some of my grandfather’s
story is to set the scene for a roll call of other people
who served in World War l and are related to readers
of the Jerrems Journal. No doubt readers have had
other accounts passed down to them.
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The “Jerrems” Soldiers |
I have located three members of the Jerrems
family who served in the First World War. They were
two brothers (Henry “Harry” Herbert Jerrems and
William George Jerrems) and their cousin
William
Frank Jerrems. They all lived in Richmond,
Melbourne,
the suburb where their fathers (Robert Cane
Jerrems
and Arthur Reginald) had lived since they had
migrated from Gainsborough with their parents and
siblings in the 1850s.
Harry (1880-1928) was the grandfather and great
grandfather of some of our Melbourne readers
(including Anita Veale and Ian and Ken Jerrems) and
William Frank Jerrems (1885-?) is the grandfather
and great grandfather of some of our Queensland
readers (including Jesse Jerrems).
Harry originally enlisted in July 1915 but was
discharged in March 1916 as being medically unfit
due to back problems incurred before the war.
Undeterred, Harry re-enlisted in January 1917 and
trained for the infantry in England. In due course he
was assigned as a reinforcement to the 38th
Battalion, which he joined in France in January 1918.
He would have seen action in the Battles of Villers
Brettoneux and the Third Battle of the Somme.
Harry’s brother William proved to be elusive, and
therein lies a story. I would not have located him
except that Alexa’s grandmother’s cousin (don’t ask
me to explain where she fits into the family tree!) said
that she met two Jerrems brothers in England who
had served in the First World War. The War Records
did not show two Jerrems brothers, so I checked the
list of men who had enlisted in Richmond and found a
reference to a William George Jerram.
William’s
mother had the same Christian names as Harry’s and
lived at the same address as Harry’s so it was
obvious I had the right person.
William George joined up 5 days after his brother and
in due course trained with the 38th Infantry Battalion in
Cairo (it was probably intended that the battalion
would serve on the Gallipoli Peninsular but that
campaign had finished before they arrived in Cairo).
William was later assigned to the 59th Battalion as a
driver in France (he had described himself as a driver
in his enlistment application). He returned to Australia
in early 1918.
Finally we come to William Frank Jerrems (by the way,
do you remember my article about the number of
descendants named “William”? William George and
William Frank help prove my point). William Frank
joined up on 5th January 1915 (perhaps the result of a
rash New Year’s resolution?) and served at Gallipoli
and France in the 6th Infantry Battalion. He was
wounded in the left hand in August 1918, possibly at
the Somme, and as the result of the wound was
repatriated to Australia shortly before the war ended.
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Other Soldiers |
Relatives of other readers of the Jerrems Journal
served in the War, including Albert Harrison
(the grandfather of reader Brian Harrison) and
Sydney Blamey (Brian’s great uncle).
Albert had served in the Boer War and obtained a
commission when he joined the AIF in 1915, serving
as a Captain in the infantry in France. He was
concussed by a shellburst at the First Battle of Ypres
(a notorious battlefield) and suffered from shell shock.
Sydney Blamey served at Gallipoli and then in the
Camel Corps in Palestine. Finally he was posted to
France where after being awarded the Military Medal
he was gassed and wounded.
A great uncle on my mother’s side (Arnold McDonald)
served all the way through from the Gallipoli landing to
the armistice in the Second Infantry Battalion and (as
related to his son Donald McDonald, my uncle) was
awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre when he led
about 20 men in capturing a German concrete pillbox
at Passchendale in the Third Battle of Ypres in
October 1917. He was very modest about his
contribution, saying he fired a few shots at the pillbox
with his revolver (sergeants carried revolvers rather
than rifles) and soon after that the German defenders
surrendered. He said he had received the decoration
simply because he was the most senior person there.
One of his men was killed so the operation was
probably not as anti-climactic as he would have had
us believe.
Another great uncle (Cyril Spurge) also survived until
the Armistice. He served as a captain in a Howitzer
Battery at Gallipoli and was then repatriated to
Australia with typhoid fever. A demon for punishment
he returned to the War when he had recovered,
serving in the Artillery from Major to Lieutenant-
Colonel. A note on his record says that he was “Escort
to the King in opening of Parliament on 7th February
1917”. As the end of the war approached he served on
Headquarters staff. He was quite a character, when I
was young he would sit me down on the back steps of
his house and feed me bananas because he said
they were very healthy for small boys.
“JERREMS” MEN IN THE USA
The United States entered the fray in 1917. Two
Jerrems men (Alexander Nicholl Jerrems and
Donald Edwin Jerrems) registered for service but
were not called up.
WHAT ABOUT THE “JERREMS” LADIES?
Recently I came across an interesting piece of
information provided by the British Journal of Nursing.
In April 1918 a number of nursing staff, including
Matron Gertrude Jerrems, were presented to
the King and received awards. As a matron Gertrude
could have been in charge of a hospital’s nursing
staff, most likely a military hospital. So at least one
Jerrems lady served with distinction during the First
World War!
Gertrude was born in 1876 and was a member of one
of the Gainsborough families (she is shown in the
1901 UK Census as living in Gainsborough with her
mother Emma and sister Evelyn).
THE MYTH OF THE TALL BRONZED ANZACS?
This falls into the category of complete trivia, but I
could not help looking at the vital statistics of the men
referred to in this article, as recorded in their
enlistment records.
In the order of mention in this article, my grandfather
was the second tallest, at five foot seven and three
quarter inches (less than 1.7 metres), the three
Jerrems men from Melbourne averaged out at five foot
five inches, Albert Harrison would have
towered over the others at five foot ten and a half
inches, Sydney Blamey was five foot seven inches,
Arnold McDonald was five foot six inches and Cyril
Spurge was about five foot seven inches (no actual
measurement shown).
The photo of my grandfather confirms that the
ANZACS were “bronzed”. But if we take the above
sample of men as being fairly representative then the
figures show that they were on average not tall by our
modern-day standards.
THE LAST POST
Well, I think this article balances the ledger somewhat
for readers who have previously read accounts of the
American Revolutionary War and the American Civil
War. Now we have stories about relatives from Down
Under in a later war.
I would like to hear from other readers who had
relatives who served in the First World War. Sadly, I
would imagine that most readers would not have first
hand accounts like those recounted in this article.
Also, if any of you have been to Villiers Brettoneaux I
would love to hear from you.