Cruthers, James William
796 Lance Corporal James Cruthers MM - 12th Battalion AIF & Australian Army Pay Corps
James William Cruthers was born in South Melbourne Victoria on the 18th April 1895 to James and Martha Cruthers.
Not long after his birth the family moved to Western Australia and took up residence in Fremantle and also Menzies for a few years. James then had some new siblings on the way with Dorothy (born 1896), Olive (1898), Walter (1899), Alfred (1901), Doris (1903), Edith (1905) and Ada (1910).
The family set up residence in Essex Street Fremantle and James was educated locally at Fremantle Boys School. He was a member of the North Fremantle Boy Scouts in the 1900's and also excelled at athletics. Prior to the First World War James had also spent three years as a member of the 11th Australian Infantry Regiment. He had an official portrait taken of his new uniform. (pictured right).
On the 14th September 1914 James enlisted into the AIF. He was found to be fit for service, with the medical examiner recording James's physical attributes as;
Height - 5 feet 7 inches tall;
Weight - 130lbs;
Chest Measurement - 34-36 inches;
Complexion - Dark;
Eyes - Green;
Hair - Black.
After his successful enlistment James was sent to Blackboy Hill Camp where he was assigned to G Company of the 12th Battalion AIF. The 12th Battalion was made up from men in Tasmania, South and West Australia.
On the 31st October 1914 James and the WA sections of the 12th Battalion boarded the transport ship HMAT Medic in Fremantle Harbour. After the ship moved out to Gage Roads they set sail on the 2nd November 1914.
After arriving in Egypt, the Australians encamped at Mena near the Pyramids. The WA men of the 12th Battalion got together to have their photo taken. (Pictured below-courtesy Army Museum of WA)
We were billeted in a big barracks (or rather what used to be a barracks as it consists only of smashed walls now) and a lad named Kennedy and myself found a lovely dugout. Of course we grabbed it, occupied it, and had a feed. All of a sudden Kennedy said “Come on out – something is going to happen!” I laughed. However he dragged me out and five minutes after a big high velocity shell blew it inside out. You should have seen my face. Rather lucky...
The first part of the journey was alright, but from Hellfire Corner (which deserved its sobriquet) we got merry hell. High explosives and shrapnel all the way. We left the road and took to the duckboards – and that is where our troubles began. My first impression was when a 9.2 shell hit a small cemetery and dug out a man who was considerably dead. When I saw him last he was lying half in and half out of a shell hole. The whole country was indescribably muddy, and there wasn’t a yard of ground which wasn’t pockmarked with shells. It was a torn and tumbled countryside which looked like the result of a mighty upheaval. The duckboard track was dotted with mules lying just where the shells got them. Dozens of them. And we passed an Australian who had evidently just been hit; his feet were on the duckboard and his head in a shell hole. It wasn’t so bad on the duckboards, though it was raining and making them a bit slippery, but when they came to an end it was awful. The mud was up to our knees and deeper still in parts. Floundering and plunging in the quagmire I cursed Fritz in every variety of “cuss” word I knew. I think I invented a few new ones. French and Arabic as well. I soon forgot the shells as I was too busy dragging my feet out of one piece of mud to place them in another. Well, to cut it short we duly arrived at our appointed place known as supports, and found that there was no cover of any sort. Raining and Fritz shelling like hell. So I grabbed a shovel and with a mate selected a spot and started to dig in. Got down a few inches when “Can’t you smell something Jimmie?” I could. Our next shovel told the tale. We had unearthed a defunct Hun. It was no good growling so we got to work on another “possie”. We got it finished all but the roof but we were so dead tired we spread our water proof sheets over us and went to sleep. Next day we finished the joint but had to keep in our dugouts because the shells were falling just beyond us and if we showed ourselves Fritz would shorten and surely get us.
The outpost line was 700 or 800 yards in front in No Mans Land and Fritz always put a barrage over to try and stop reliefs. Well, we got through it alright and I got my orders from the NCO who was in charge and whom I was relieving in this manner:- “Yer front is from there to there. You aint got nothing to be scared of here because there’s a morass on yer right and the 9th is on yer left. Its No.13 post. And it’s the extreme left and therefore the most dangerous. There useter be a No.14 but the gory Hun lobbed a 9” shell inter it and blew the guts out of it. Yer mustn’t try to improve the joint because Fritz planes fly about 60 feet over yer nut and they are sure to notice the difference and up goes yer show.” Cheerful.
Well we settled down in a cramped position – me in charge of a machine gun team and I didn’t know one end from the other of the gun and supposed to hold up the German Army in case of attack. Then the dirty swines started shelling. And it was some shelling too. Fairly made our teeth rattle. We got settled down and an officer came out to us. I told him the 9th were 200 or 300 yds on our left so he took 3 of my men and went to connect up with them. Said he wouldn’t be long. He was only away 2-1/2 hours. I felt dead certain that he had run into a Fritz patrol and got smashed up. However he turned up about 3 in the morning. Seemed he had missed the 9th altogether and was nearly shot by a Canadian outpost about 3 or 4 miles over on the left. He found the 9th on the way back and their nearest outpost was 500 to 600 yds away. Just enough space for the whole German Army to get through unnoticed. But that’s not my grievance – what made me feel that nobody loved me was this: while Vaughan was away with my three men (which left only 2 men besides myself) another officer came out with a fatigue party and duckboards, iron and sandbags. He said that I was to get to work and improve the outpost. Couldn’t see my way clear. Told him I didn’t want the men entrusted to me wiped out having in mind what the other N.C.O. had told me. I went on to say that half my men were away on patrol and if that material wasn’t shifted I would sink it into the mud out of sight. Needless to remark the officer (having a sufficiency of rum aboard) became snaky and said “I’ll give you 10 minutes to get to work. If you don’t start I’ll take you back under arrest and get you courtmartialled and 10 years. Of course it wasn’t any good kicking so we three set to work. It took us all night but we got finished and I knew the planes could not help but notice the difference. However, fortune favoured us and dozens of our planes came over and kept Fritz so busy that his machines could not come over. I reckoned that saved our lives. Well, my men had had a rough time of it and I reckoned that they had earned a nip of rum.
This meant going 600 to 700 yards under heavy shell fire to get it. It was too much to ask any man to go and I wouldn’t ask a man to go where I would not go myself, so I took a Dixie and started out – and caught Fritz’s dawn barrage. I got through alright got the rum and started to come back. Needless to remark I got lost and a big shell blew me off my feet, but I saved the rum. Soon as I found I was lost I marked down the spot where I was and started to walk in a circle around it. It’s an old trick but hard to carry out amongst bursting shells. I found the next post to mine on the second time round and got to 13 in the dawn. Those lads thought I was a hero, but after all, I was too busy to be frightened. Well the day was fairly uneventful though shrapnel and shell splinters made things miserable and having to stay cramped up out of sight for fear of giving the show away. I was glad when night came and with it the relief. I handed over my orders with some despatch I can assure you and got off the mark quick and lively. Our time in the line was finished and we were going right back to our billets. To complete a perfect day our guide got lost after leaving the line and we walked miles and miles over duckboards, trying to find the road. I reckoned it was the dead limit in hard luck. By the time we had walked for an hour I was quite impervious to the conditions, neither shells, mud, nor biting wind worried me. I believe I went to sleep walking for I found myself standing waist deep in a muddy shell hole. We arrived “home” 2-1/2 hours after the rest of the Battn dead beat. But it seems news had gone ahead, sort of “bush” telegram that “little Jimmie was having a terrible crook spin” and when I got in one was saying “Here’s your nap Jimmie”, and another, “Here’s your stew Jimmie”, and they dragged my muddy harness off me and gave me a big dixie of stew and – two bottles of English beer! God knows where they got it, but I feel at peace with all mankind and turned into doss as nearly happy as I could be in this country. But it would have warmed your heart to see how those boys looked after me.'



