Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of Thomas and Mary Jane Barnes of Wondai, Queensland

IN MEMORY OF THE DEARLY LOVED SON OF M.J. BARNES

#3355 (A)  BARNES John Richard       49th Infantry Battalion
 
John Barnes reported he was born at Tallebudgera on the Queensland South Coast although his mother when completing the Roll of Honour Circular stated that John had been born at Currumbin Creek. By the time that John was old enough to attend school, the family were living at Cordalba outside Childers.
 
The family moved again, this time to Wondai, to take up farming. John presented himself for enlistment at Maryborough on 17th October 1916, just as the first of the conscription plebiscites was being held. He gave his age as 23 and occupation as farmer. John was recorded as being just over six feet tall but rather thin. His father had died some time before and John was the sole male working on the family farm.
 
John travelled by train to Brisbane and then on to the Rifle Range Camp at Enoggera where he was placed in a depot battalion. During the new year period of 1916/17, John took home leave to travel back to Wondai to attend to business and to see his mother and sisters. Upon his return to camp, John was allocated to the 9th reinforcements of the 49th Battalion. The reinforcements travelled by train to Sydney where they embarked on the “Ayrshire”
on the 24th January 1917.
 
The reinforcements sailed to England via South Africa to avoid the threat of submarine activity in the Mediterranean and the approaches to the English Channel. En Route, John became ill and spent some time in the ship’s hospital before being disembarked at Freetown in Sierra Leone for further treatment. After a week in hospital on land, John was re-embarked on another troop ship and finally landed at Plymouth on 21st May 1917.
 
John made his way to the 13th Training Battalion at Codford, between Salisbury and Bath where he spent the next five months in training before being shipped to France via Southampton. On 23rd October 1917, almost a year exactly since enlisting, John finally marched into the billets of the 49th Battalion.
 
The 49th Battalion, part of the 13th Infantry Brigade of the 4th Division of the AIF, had endured almost constant deployments during the latter half of 1917, beginning at Messines in June and culminating in the horror that was Passchendaele in October. After such activity, the entire 4th Division was badly in need of a rest. When John joined up with the 49th, the battalion was in comfortable billets in the rear areas behind Ypres in Belgium. Winter would close down the western front to major assaults until the coming of spring and the Australians took advantage of the lull in activity to rest, retrain and engage in competitive sports. Inexplicably, the allotment of three shillings a day that John had made from his pay for the support of his mother and sisters stopped. Mary Anne Barnes wrote to the authorities to express her distress and seek some explanation. As is usual in any bureaucracy the matter was referred to a number of officials and was most likely was resolved, although there is no correspondence in John’s file to this effect.
 
The later part of 1917 produced a change in the strategic situation as far as the German command was concerned. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia brought about the end to fighting on the Eastern Front. A peace treaty between Germany and Russia released up to sixty German divisions which, once re-equipped and re-trained, could be used to press home a distinct advantage on the Western Front. The window for exploiting this advantage was however rather small as the entry of the United States into the war and an expected surge in troop numbers from July 1918 onwards would swing the advantage back to the Entente. The German commander, Ludendorff had only a short time to press home his advantage.
 
The British Commander, General Haig, was fully expecting a German assault in the spring of 1918 but he guessed incorrectly that the main thrust would be aimed at the Ypres salient in Belgium. When Operation Michael began on 21st March, the main assault was aimed along the line of the Somme River, the scene of so much fighting and hard won victories in 1916.
The British 5th Army, which was holding the line astride the Somme was unable to hold the German onslaught which in some places amounted to a five time numerical advantage. As the British retreated, often in disarray, the German Stormtroopers retook all of the gains made by the British in the Somme campaign and were within a few days of capturing the vital communication city of Amiens. If Amiens fell, Haig might well have lost the war; the situation was deadly serious.
 
Haig ordered his most successful and battle hardened troops, four of the five divisions of the AIF in Belgium to race south to establish a defensive line in front of Amiens. On 26th March, the 4th Division, which included John Barnes in the 49th, began a journey south. At first, they travelled by train and then motor buses but for the final part of the trek, the men marched through the night with the encroaching enemy somewhere out on their left. Two brigades of the 4th Division, the 12th and 13th, covered a distance of 35 kilometres on the evening of the 31st March to reach a position overlooking a railway line and the village of Dernacourt just across the embankment.
 
Battalions of the 12th Brigade took up a defensive line on an exposed forward slope and endured heavy artillery barrages from across the rail line. The 49th Battalion was in reserve on the reverse slope of the ridge unable to see the enemy activity but nevertheless exposed to constant shelling. After four days, the Germans had assembled almost two whole divisions at Dernacourt and were ready to attack. On 5th April, two companies of the 47th Battalion which were dug in on the railway embankment were over run and the German attackers poured through a railway underpass. At 5pm, the 4th Division Commander ordered the 49th supported by the 50th Battalion to counter attack. The two battalions moved up and over the ridge and began to engage the Germans who were occupying the ground between the ridge and the railway line.
 
A Red Cross report into John Barnes’ death stated that John was acting as a signaller (Dernacourt was his first time in action) as the battalion moved down the slope when he was hit by a burst of machine gun fire in his torso and legs. It is stated that he was carried from the field but died before reaching a dressing station. John was buried at a cemetery in Buire with the 13th Brigade chaplain in attendance. A temporary wooden cross was placed on his grave. John was 25.
 
The intervention of the 49th and 50th Battalions on 5th April turned the tide of the battle in the Australians favour. Two brigades of Australian Infantry had faced two and a half German divisions and come out on top. It was probably the most significant feat of arms in the war.
 
Soon after John’s death, his personal effects which included photos, letters and cards and a broken watch were collected and sent to the kit store in London where they the items were parcelled up. The parcel, along with over 5,000 other parcels, was loaded onto the S.S. Barunga for despatch to Australia.
 
Sadly, the Barunga, a former German ship which had been captured in Sydney at the beginning of the war, was torpedoed off the Scilly Isles. The passengers and crew were all rescued but the cargo went to the bottom of the Atlantic. There in no notation in the official files regarding a pension being awarded to Mary Ann Barnes but given her circumstances it is most likely that that did occur.
 
When war graves were being concentrated after the war, John Barnes remains were reinterred in the Dernacourt Communal Cemetery, in almost the exact spot where the action of 5th April occurred. Mary Ann Barnes chose as the personal inscription for her son’s headstone: IN MEMORY OF THE DEARLY LOVED SON OF M.J.BARNES