Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 608 STRANG John (Jack) Thomson Fletcher                       5th Light Horse / 47th Battalion
 
Jack Strang was born in Dalby to Mary and James Strang and was possibly their only child. Jack may have attended school in Dalby where he served for two years in the Dalby Cadets. James and Mary Strang moved to the Kaimkillenbun district and gave their address as Square Top P.O. Dalby. Squaretop is a geological feature just outside the township of Kaimkillenbun, between Dalby and Bell.
 
Jack travelled to Brisbane to enlist at Enoggera on 7th November 1914. He stated his age as 19 years and occupation as labourer. His height at the medical exam is recorded as 5’10”. The recruiting officer would not accept Jack’s enrolment as he was under age, being only 19 years old. It appears that Jack was so anxious to enlist that he sent a telegram to his parents requesting they grant their permission in a return telegram. The telegram was sent from the Kaimkillenbun Post Office and was received at Enoggera on 10thNovember, after which Jack was formally admitted into the AIF as a Trooper in “C” Squadron of the 5th Light Horse Regiment which was being formed at Enoggera. The 5th LHR had begun accepting recruits in September of 1914 and Jack was probably one of the last to be taken on before the regiment began preparations to depart for the war.
 
On 12th December 1914, the 5th LHR began loading onto trains at Newmarket railway station which would take the men and horses as far as Wallangarra on the Qld / NSW border. At Wallangarra, the light horseman and their horses had to detrain and transfer to a wider gauge NSW train. Regulations at NSW border crossings required that the animals had to be dipped to ensure that they were not carrying any pests such as ticks. The toxic mixture used in the dip caused a number of horses to become sick and the war diary records that some in fact died or had to be put down by the veterinary officer. In fact, the war diary records that horses were still suffering from the effects of the Wallangarra dip during the voyage across the Indian Ocean.
 
After the Wallangarra fiasco, the 5th LHR travelled on to Sydney and went into temporary camp at Liverpool before boarding the transport “Persic” on 21st December. The ship had a brief stopover at Albany WA before continuing across the Indian Ocean to disembark the regiment on 1st February. The regiment proceeded to camp at Maadi where the 5th joined the 6th and 7th Light Horse Regiments to make up the 2nd Light Horse Brigade. Training began at squadron level before progressing to regiment and finally brigade manoeuvres over the next three months. It was envisaged that the Light Horse would be employed as a defensive force to meet a possible Turkish threat to the vital Suez Canal.
 
The bulk of the AIF Infantry Brigades spent the first three months of 1915 in Egypt training for an expected landing at the Dardanelles in Turkey. When the landing took place on 25th April, the conditions and topography faced by the Australians immediately presented problems for the Anzac commanders. Reinforcements were needed to press forward beyond the first line of ridges. On 18th May, less than four weeks after the landing at Anzac Cove, the 5th Light Horse, having left their horses behind in Egypt, landed at Anzac Cove and went into the firing line at Pope’s Hill.
 
Since the day of the first landing, the Turks, with the advantage of height, had staged a number of downhill bayonet charges to drive the Australians back to the beach head. As time progressed, the charges had become more and more desperate and the slopes were strewn with the bodies of Turkish soldiers who had fallen during charges. The bodies lying exposed to the sun attracted insects and other vermin and posed a serious health threat to both sides. On 24th May, the light horsemen witnessed an unusual sight when a ceasefire was declared for 12 hours all along the Anzac front so that each side could retrieve and bury their dead. Fighting resumed in earnest at 5:00pm.
 
The lack of fresh water was a constant problem for the AIF at Gallipoli. In the planning for the expedition, little thought had been given to the provision of potable water and supplies had to be brought in from Lemnos and piped ashore during the hours of darkness. The men in the firing line were restricted to one pint of water a day, from which they had to ration water for cooking or tea, drinking, shaving and if there was any remaining, washing. As a consequence of the water shortage, hygiene suffered and diseases such typhoid and dysentery were endemic.
 
On 26th June, at the height of a typhoid outbreak, Jack Strang was evacuated by hospital ship to the Australian General Hospital on the island of Lemnos, where he was diagnosed with enteric fever (typhoid). When his condition did not improve, he was sent to the 21st Australian General Hospital in Cairo on 3rd July 1915. There was very little that could be done with typhoid cases in 1915. Patients were given bed rest while samples were taken to determine if the infection was still present. On 28th July, although still very weak but probably no longer contagious, Jack was sent to a convalescent hospital in Suez.
 
Jack appeared before a medical board where it was determined that he should be returned to Australia “for change.” Such a decision was common in 1915 when reinforcements were plentiful and the lines of communication back to Australia were relatively safe from enemy naval threats. Jack boarded a ship in Suez for the return to Australia and arrived in Melbourne on 4th October. He fronted a medical board at the Army Depot at Kangaroo Point in Brisbane on 25th October where it was decided that he should be granted 10 weeks leave in which to regain his strength and health. Jack probably went home to Kaimkillenbun to recuperate.
 
On 5th February 1916, Jack reported again to the depot at Kangaroo Point where he was tested and found to be free of any bacteria. He was sent to the headquarters of the 1st Military District at Victoria Barracks in Brisbane where he presumably performed clerical tasks before being drafted back to Enoggera where he was taken on by the 6th reinforcements of the 47th Battalion as an infantryman on 6th June. On 1st August, Jack was posted to corporal school. Upon his return to Enoggera, he was promoted to the rank of temporary corporal for the voyage to England.
 
The reinforcements embarked on the Marathon” in Brisbane on 27th October and sailed via South Africa and Sierra Leone to land in Plymouth on 13th January 1917. They then boarded a train which took them to the 12th Brigade Training Battalion Camp at Codford on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. Jack and most of the other reinforcements remained in England until April when they were posted to the Australian Divisional Depot at Etaples on the French Coast. Jack was taken on strength by his new battalion, the 47th on 19th April where he was immediately promoted to permanent Lance Corporal.
 
Jack arrived at his new posting in the midst of a major change to the 47th. The battalion had just been relieved from a disastrous assault in the snow at Bullecourt where casualties were very high. The commanding officer, a Gallipoli veteran who had not fully recovered from a chest wound received in 1915, was replaced by Lt Colonel Imlay. Imlay had been appointed with the express purpose of imposing a firm hand on the battalion which had a previous reputation for ill-discipline and poor administration. The 47threlocated from Bapaume on the Somme to the rear areas of the front on the French Belgian border to train for the huge offensive planned for the summer of 1917 in the Ypres salient.
 
On the Ypres salient, the Germans were in possession of a prominent and heavily defended ridge which ran from a point just south of Ypres through the village of Messines and on to Warneton. Before the campaign proper could begin, the enemy would have to be driven off Messines Ridge.
 
From the early months of 1915, British tunnellers, many of whom had been recruited from the London underground construction, had been tunnelling and undermining the German positions on Messines Ridge. By the middle of 1917, the tunnellers had laid 22 explosive charges beneath the ridge in anticipation of the coming offensive.
 
The British general in charge in Flanders had his intelligence staff construct a scale model of the terrain that his advancing troops would encounter when the battle began. The 47th Battalion was to be included in the second wave of attack in the afternoon of the 7th June and the entire battalion was walked through the model to familiarise themselves with their objective coded the Black Line. The day before the attack, Jack was promoted to full corporal.
 
The British had at their disposal almost three million artillery shells with which the gunners pummelled the German lines for three weeks prior to the 7th June. At 3:40am on 7th June 1917, 19 of the underground mines beneath the Messines Ridge were fired simultaneously. The resultant explosions were the largest in history at that time and the effects were felt as far away as London. Many of the craters created by the explosions are still visible today, particularly at Hill 60 and the Caterpillar Crater.
 
Once the smoke and dust cleared, the first wave of infantry clambered across the shattered ground meeting very little resistance from the disoriented defenders. By the time the second wave set off in the afternoon, which included the 47th and the other battalions of the 12th Brigade, the German defenders had regrouped and in spite of suffering numerous casualties earlier in the day, mounted a spirited defence. The 47th Battalion was tasked with advancing beyond the village of Messines to the Oosttaverne Line. The officers were dressed as privates to avoid being targeted by snipers. As the battalion advanced in two lines of two companies towards a line of pill boxes positioned on road embankment known as Hun’s Walk, they were caught between two competing barrages of shells and machine gun fire. It was probably at this time that Corporal Jack Strang fell.
 
Jack was listed as missing in action. The battalion suffered 460 casualties at Messines, 35 of whom were missing, and it took some time to determine the fate of the missing. A Private Atkinson wrote to Jack’s parents on 2nd July to inform them that although the official report was that their son was missing, Atkinson stated that Jack had in fact been killed. He enclosed a pocket book which he stated showed that Jack had been hit in the chest either by shrapnel or machine gun bullet. It is unclear from the text of the letter if Atkinson actually saw Jack hit or if he came upon his body later in the day. Mary and James Strang duly wrote to Base Records in Melbourne informing them of this evidence. Base Records requested that a copy of the letter be sent so that the official record could be amended. Mary Strang copied the letter by hand and this item is in Jack’s file. Atkinson’s letter proved that Jack was deceased but did not indicate if he had been buried on the battlefield. There was no official burial report and Jack Strang was declared Killed in Action on 7th June 1917 by a Board of Inquiry on 24th November 1917, grave unknown.
 
In due course, Mary and James received a parcel of Jack’s belongings including several notebooks, cards and letters and a songbook. As Jack had been his parents’ only means of support, Mary Strang was granted a pension of two pounds per fortnight.
 
Corporal John Thomson Strang, aged 21, is one of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave. Their names are inscribed on the Portland Stone Tablets under the arches of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in the City of Ypres.
Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to honour those who died in the Ypres campaign and who are remembered on the Menin Gate. The ceremony concludes with the laying of wreaths, the recitation of the ode, and the playing of the Last Post by the city’s bugle corps
The commemoration of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian war artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting, which now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, toured Australia during the 1920s and 30s and drew huge crowds. The painting in one of the AWM’s most prised exhibits.