‘Tell Mr. Renton I’m ready.’
Lance Corporal James Austin 1st Battalion, The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, 4600- killed in action 9th May 1915, aged 35
James Austin’s name is recorded on the Roll Of Honour of Fern Street Sunday School, part of the Methodist Church of that name that once stood in his hometown of Bolton, Lancashire. Austin attended the town’s Pike’s Lane Council School before starting work in a textile mill as a cotton spinner. This was the same profession as his father, John Austin. The Austins were recorded as living at 69 Gibraltar Street in Deane, Bolton in 1911. James Austin had two sisters and two brothers (Elizabeth b. 1877, John b. 1882, Alexander b. 1890 and Annie b. 1893). In 1901 all of the family, with the exception of the mother Annie Austin and her youngest daughter who was still at school, were working in the textile trade, probably at one of the local mills. This was a ‘God-fearing’ family, remembered by the historian of their Methodist- Wesleyan community as some ‘of the most devoted members of our Church’.
Bolton was part of the Preston based Loyal Regiment’s recruiting area and James Austin had served in the 5th Battalion The Loyal North Lancashire Volunteers at the turn of the 19th century. The Volunteers were a precursor to the Territorial Army. James Austin’s service in the 5th ended in 1901, seven years before the Territorials were created.
When war broke out in August 1914, James Austin, who by then had married his wife Bertha (nee Rothwell) in 1909 and was living at 64 Gibraltar Street, did not immediately volunteer. He was a married man of 34 and the early recruiting drives had asked for volunteers between the ages of 19 and 35. Austin perhaps thought himself sufficiently near the age threshold as to be not required, or perhaps his wife or family urged him not to enlist,
Whatever the reason, James Austin changed his mind and attested before a Magistrate at the recruiting office in Bolton on 29th October 1914. He had been medically examined the previous day. The Doctor noted that he was 5’ 5¼” tall, weighed 133 lbs., that his physical development was good and that he had grey blue eyes and dark brown hair.
A reference provided for Austin when he enlisted survives. Harold Warburton, whose scrap metal business was on Haydock Street in Bolton, stated that he had known James Austin for a few years and that he had always found him to be ‘calm, steady’ and ‘earnest’ before concluding that Austin was ‘a good man in every form.’ The following day James Austin reported to the Loyal Regiment’s depot at Preston, before being allocated to the regiment’s 3rd battalion, a training unit then based in Felixstowe. He had 193 days to live.
Austin’s service record shows that he allocated 3s 6d (17.5 pence) of his 5s (25 pence, or approximately £70 in current values) a week pay to his wife, who also received 9s (45 pence) a week separation allowance. One of Austin’s former Sunday school contemporaries, Harry Lindsey, was by then a 2nd Lieutenant in the regiment’s 1st/4th battalion. As a junior officer, Lindsey was paid £1 17s 6d per week (£1.75p or £490 in current values). Although it is unlikely that either of the two men drank, the average price of a pint of beer in 1914 was 3d (1.5 pence). To give an example of relative worth James Austin’s full army wage would have bought him 20 pints of beer and Harry Lindsay’s 150.
On the inauspicious date of 1st April, James Austin was made up to (unpaid) Lance Corporal. Four days later he was part of a re-enforcement draft sent to the regiment’s 1st battalion then on active service in France. James Austin would have been well aware of what lay ahead of him. F.A. Bolwell, a contemporary of Austin in the ranks of the 1st Loyals, a pre-war regular who had been re-called as a reservist in August 1914, remembered the words spoken to his draft of reinforcements posted to the front. The Lt. Colonel who addressed the men had pulled no punches:
Men of the 1st Loyal North Lancashire Regiment! I wish to bring home to you the fact that we have a hard task before us. We are out to fight a great nation and men who are out for blood. This Regiment have always been top-dogs even with the boys (meaning time-serving men: they had that year won nine football cups out of a possible eleven, besides other sporting competitions). What are we going to do now that we have the men? (meaning the Reservists). None of you men will come back—nor the next lot—nor the next after that—nor the next after that again; but some of the next might. But we’ll give those Germans something to go on with, and we’ll give a good account of ourselves! Remember, men, the eyes of the whole world will be upon us, and I know that you will perform whatever task is allotted to you, like men. The Lt. Colonel’s words would turn out to be chillingly prophetic.
James Austin was appointed a paid Lance Corporal in D Company, 1st Loyal North Lancashire Regiment on 1st February 1915. The 1st Loyals was a pre-war regular battalion, which then served in the 2nd Brigade of the BEF’s 1st Division. His time with the First battalion was short, just over four month before he was killed in action at Richebourg on 9th May 1915, during the battle of Aubers Ridge. The battle he was killed in, described by one commentator as ‘an unmitigated disaster’, resulted in no ground, or tactical advantage being achieved by the B.E.F at the cost of over 11,000 men. The British artillery failed to either breach the German barbed wire or to neutralize the German machine gun positions.
German machine gun team at Aubers Ridge
The pre-war regular Bolwell was in the British trenches in the same battalion as James Austin at Richebourg. The signal for the British bombardment to begin, he remembered, was given by a ‘big gun’, probably a howitzer, which fired a solitary round at five-thirty in the morning of 9th May. That was immediately followed by the continuous roar of massed British artillery opening up on the German position, a crescendo of explosions he remembered, ‘as if all hell were let loose’.
Aubers Ridge
Unable to believe that the Germans could survive the weight of shells being poured down on them, men of the Loyals stood on the top of their trenches to see what Bolwell described as ‘the fun’. Their delight quickly faded when German sniper fire told them that far from being destroyed, the Germans where still there and ready for a fight. During a lull in the bombardment many of the Loyals clearly heard an English speaking German soldier roaring a challenge out to them across no-man’s land.
‘Come on,’ he yelled, ‘we’ve been waiting for you for 24 hours!’
At eight in the morning the guns fell silent, and the 2nd Brigade went over the top, the Loyals in the centre of the advance. The German trenches were only three hundred yards distant, but not a solitary British soldier reached them. As Private Bolwell remembered, the farthest point most of them reached was half way across no-man’s land, before the un-silenced German machine guns stopped the advance in its tracks with a wall of lead, although the body of the battalion’s sniping officer, Lt. Garrod, was later found on the uncut German wire just in front of their trenches. A Private Warren of the Loyals later described the intensity of the German fire during the engagement to a journalist. He told of the death of a Lt. Williams of the Loyals, who unable to advance further, refused to go to ground and take cover, ‘until he fell back in the trench literally riddled with bullets from one of the enemy’s machine guns.’
At eleven in the morning the entire 2nd Brigade were pulled back to the reserve trenches to reorganise. James Austin’s battalion had been reduced to just over 430 men. The survivors of the 1st Loyals were led back to the front line, and watched as another British bombardment attempted to smash through the German barbed wire. At four in the afternoon they were still watching as two companies of the Black Watch advanced through their positions and forwards to the German lines. Some of them succeeded in getting into the German trenches, in what Bolwell remembered as a ‘glorious piece of work’, but there were too few of them left to achieve anything, and the Germans quickly dealt them with. Some of the Black Watch finally surrendered to the enemy. Bolwell recalled what happened to them:
‘The Germans took their rifles and equipment from them’, he wrote, ‘and set them free to get back across no-man’s land as best they could, turning their machine guns on them as they did so.’
The Black Watch reach the German wire: as imagined by a contemporary artist
It was a suitably murderous end to a bloody day, during which the British 1st Division suffered nearly 8,000 casualties. The 1st Loyals lost their C.O. wounded and three of their four company commanders killed as well as its machine gun and sniping officers and three hundred of its other ranks, including Lance Corporal James Austin.
His name is remembered on the Le Touret memorial to the missing, along with those of the other 13,400 British soldiers killed in this sector between October 1914 and late September 1915 who have no known grave. His wife Bertha was awarded a war widows pension of 10s per week with effect from 22nd November 1915. She never remarried and died in Bolton in 1963.
Le Touret Memorial
When the war began James’ younger brother, John Austin at 5’ ¾” wasn’t tall enough to join the army, whose minimum height requirement was 5’3”. He could later have joined one of the ‘bantam battalions’ raised between late 1914 and 1916 in which the height requirement was dropped to 5’, but perhaps he didn’t wish to be so segregated. Whatever the reason, he attested in 1915 under the Derby Scheme and was called to the colours in March 1916. He served briefly in the 16th King’s Liverpools and then in the 2nd/5th Cheshire Regiment, before being discharged on medical grounds in June 1916 on the grounds of ‘mental deficiency-not likely to become an efficient soldier.’
The doctors who rejected his services were not mental health experts and the term shouldn’t be taken as a statement on his mental abilities. He had after all held down a technical, demanding job in the mills for most of his life, before going into business in his own right as a boot repairer. The army may just have decided that he wasn’t cut out for a soldier, perhaps because he couldn’t march in step, however hard he tried, or for some other similar reason and dispensed with his services using ‘mental deficiency’ as a catch all reason. John Austin never married and died in 1934. James Austin’s other brother, Alexander, served as a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery, saw active service in France, survived the war and married in 1921
James Austin’s battalion, the 1st Loyals suffered high levels of casualties on 9th May 1915 at Richebourg. Indirectly these casualties caused other deaths including that of one of the battalion’s own private soldiers, who survived the battle but was later executed on 21st February 1916. Private William Hunter had deserted on more than one occasion. A Field General Court Martial found him guilty and sentenced him to death by shooting, but recommended clemency on the grounds of grounds of his ‘extreme youth, service in the field and likelihood of being a good fighting man’.
At his court martial his good conduct at Richebourg was submitted in evidence and also the fact that he had enlisted under age and was only 17 years old when he first absented himself from the battalion. His Corps Commander, Lt. General Henry Wilson endorsed the plea for mercy. Someone at the top level within the B.E.F thought differently, after perhaps considering the assessment of the Officer Commanding 2nd Brigade, who wrote:
‘The number of cases of desertion or other serious crimes, such as sleeping on sentry duty, in the battalion have been unduly high. The state of discipline generally in the battalion is unsatisfactory… Under the circumstances I am unable to endorse the recommendation to mercy recorded by the Court.’ Haig, commanding the B.E.F agreed with that consideration and so William Hunter was shot dead by a firing squad composed of men of his own battalion. At the time of his death, he was 18 years old.
The ‘crimes’ in the battalion being at a high rate was probably due to the absence of familiar officers, so many of whom had been killed or wounded at Richebourg and other actions and whose replacements didn’t know their men, many of who, of course, were casualty replacements and also new to the battalion. William Hunter was executed ‘to encourage the others’ as a salutary lesson to the 1st Loyal North Lancashire.
Military Execution: A Firing Party takes aim
Lance Corporal James Austin was the first of the former students of Fern Street Sunday School to fall in the service of his country in the Great War. He had been a member of Fern Street’s Men’s Bible Class and was remembered as being well respected and as having a ‘quiet retiring nature’. One of the senior N.C.Os of Austin’s D company later wrote to Austin’s grieving parents and told of their son’s death: ‘He did his duty nobly’, the now unknown N.C.O wrote, ‘and died like a hero.’ Shortly before his death James Austin had written to a friend and asked him to pass on a message to the Reverend Albany S. Renton, who had been associated with Fern Street Church for many years. ‘Tell Mr. Renton’, Austin wrote, ‘I’m ready.’
James Austin’s service record and the subsequent pension records for his wife survive and he is also remembered in Hannah Cottrell’s Gate Pike. F. A. Bolwell wrote his memoir of his days of active service with the 1st Loyals and described the events of 9th May 1915 in, With a Reservist in France (George Routledge & Sons, London & E.P Dutton, New York-) written whilst the war was still being fought in 1917 and Private Frank Warren’s recollections of the deadly slaughter at Richebourg appeared in the Prescot Reporter on 12th November 1915. The transcripts of Private William Hunter’s court martial can be read at the National Archives.
Loyal North Lancashire Regiment: Other Ranks cap badge 1914-1918
world war one: the untold stories 