Can you help us identify John Whitehill?

John (Jack) Alger Whitehill was born in 1893 at North Melbourne, Victoria to Mark Hadley Whitehill and Violet Louisa (nee Reid). He was the second of their three children; Olive and Myrtle were born two years before and after him. Tragedy struck the family when Jack was just three - his father Mark died of heart failure at the age of 36. According to Jack’s Aunt, Victoria Staff, he was then raised by his grandparents John Francis and Sarah Whitehill, in Yackandandah, Victoria, 300 km northeast of Melbourne.

Jack’s mother remarried in about 1900 to William Campbell and they had a son, Horace Leslie Campbell. It is not known what role Violet played in her elder children’s lives. In 1914 and 1915 Jack was working as a labourer in Toolleen, which is between Bendigo and Echuca. Jack’s half-brother Horace also served in the War (Regimental No. 3537). When he enlisted, he stated his age as 18 instead of 17 because he was too young to join. He served in the 8th Light Horse Regiment as a Trooper with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. He returned to Australia in January 1919.

Violet passed away in 1918, two years after Jack’s death and before Horace returned from the War.

Jack enlisted on 20 July 1915 at Melbourne, Victoria and was assigned to the 23rd Battalion, 7th Reinforcements. Around this time he met May Constance Allen, who had only arrived in Australia from England in September 1914. May was working as a domestic servant. Not unusual for the circumstances, their romance was short and they married ONE day before he left for Egypt and the Western Front. Their son, John Alger Whitehill Junior, was born on 16 February 1916. According to Jack’s mate Thomas Stannard (3251).

Jack set sail from Melbourne on 26 November 1915 aboard HMAT A73 Commonwealth, headed for Egypt. Along with Jack were two soldiers whose fates would be tied to his, George Watt (3288) and Thomas Stannard.

Jack arrived in Egypt just as the Gallipoli soldiers were returning. With the thousands of new recruits coming from Australia, major reorganizations were underway and Jack was assigned to the newly created 58th Battalion in late February. Roughly half of its recruits were Gallipoli veterans from the 6th Battalion and the other half were the fresh reinforcements from Australia. After a month of training at Tel el Kebir they had a grueling three-day march in the Egyptian heat to get to Ferry Post for further training and guarding of the Suez Canal.

By early June the battalion was at a total strength of over 1000 men. On 13 June they were in Moascar and orders were received to head to the Western Front. They boarded the H7 Transylvania in Alexandria on 17 June and arrived in Marseilles on the 23rd. From there they had a three-day train ride to Steenbecque, 35 km from Fleurbaix.

Fellow 58th soldier Bill Boyce’s (3022) comment on his reactions to being in France :

After marching to Fleurbaix and undergoing some further training, including the use of gas masks, they were into the trenches for the first time on 11 July. In his memoirs, Bill Boyce summed the situation up well, “What have I let myself in for?”

Source Australian War Memorial Collection C386815

The battle plan had the 15th Brigade located just to the left of the British Army. The 59th and 60th Battalions were to be the leads for this area of the attack, with the 58th and 57th as the ‘third and fourth’ battalions, in reserve. The ‘Sugar Loaf’ salient, a heavily manned position with many machine guns, was directly across from them. Fire from here could enfilade any troops advancing towards the front lines, giving the Germans a significant advantage. The 58th Battalion’s role was to be carrying ammunition, digging the communication trenches for area gained in No Man’s land and into the battle for fighting relief as needed. The Australian’s attack was planned for the 17th, but it was delayed due to bad weather.

The 59th and 60th went over the parapet at 5.45 PM on the 19th, drawing immediate and intense fire from rifles and the Sugar Loaf machine guns just a short distance away. As documented in the messages sent back to HQ just after the attacks began:

With the severity of the German’s defence, the 58th A and B Companies were brought forward for support at 9 PM. The 15th Brigade notes on the battle captures the intensity of this part of the attack – “they were enfiladed by machine guns in the Sugar Loaf and melted away.”

At 11.15 PM the rest of the 58th were brought forward to try digging in at 100 yards from the German trench, but no further progress was reported. By 2.52 AM the soldiers from the 58th were withdrawn and replaced by the 57th. They all remained under heavy shelling until 10 AM on the 20th when the firing finally ceased. Of the 1002 men of the 58th that left Egypt, the roll call reflected 27 killed, 167 wounded and 53 were missing, including Jack. The figures for the 15th Brigade were 84 killed, 1163 wounded and 563 missing.

Ultimately the impact on the 58th was that 154 soldiers were killed or died from wounds. Of this total, 64 remain missing/unidentified. The 15th Brigade total was 951 soldiers killed. To get some perspective of the battle, when Charles Bean, Australia’s official war historian, attended the battlefield two and half years later, he observed a large amount of bones, torn uniforms and Australian kit still on the battlefield.

Jack was killed in action on the night of the 19 July 1916, but given the situation, was initially reported as ‘missing’. May and the family had been notified about Jack, but there was no further information that the Army could provide. Jack’s Aunt Victoria had been close to him and his sisters Olive and Myrtle and she wrote to the Army a number of times to try and ascertain what happened to him.

She ended her 24 March 1917 letter to the Red Cross with, “he was beloved by us all.” With no information available from any Australians, even his mate Thomas Stannard’s witness statement was not taken until December 1919, and with no record of him being a prisoner, Jack was confirmed as having been killed in action by a formal ‘enquiry in the field’ that was held on 1 September 1917.

Thomas Stannard’s witness statement showed that he was a good friend, but even he had little in the way of details of what happened to Jack:

Jack remains missing to this day.

He was awarded the Victory Medal, the Star Medal, a Memorial Plaque and a Memorial Scroll and is commemorated at V.C. Corner (Panel No 14), Australian Cemetery Memorial, Fromelles, France.

May wrote to the War department in 1921, but there was nothing they had to offer:

May did receive a pension from the Army which helped her to raise their young son John. Around 1920, she met and began a relationship with Percy Francis Claxton. One of Percy’s cousins, Maurice Claxton (1239) had also died at Fromelles and is buried at Pheasant Wood. May and Percy had a daughter, May Alice. Unfortunately, Percy died in 1931. May lived until 1984. John Junior followed his father’s footsteps into the Army, serving in World War 2.

He joined the Citizens Military Forces in 1940 and then served in the regular army from 1942-1945. He was posted in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea during the Australians’ involvement there. He was with the 16th Works Company that provided the infrastructure support needed for the Army’s operations. John married in 1941 and had a son and a daughter. He passed away in 1985.

While Jack’s body was not recorded as having been recovered, there is an undated handwritten note in his file that simply states.

This could just be a statement acknowledging that he was simply lost in the battlefield, but other soldiers do have similar statements in their files, some of which have been found to be in the Pheasant Wood burial pit. While there are only three soldiers from the 15th Brigade that have been identified so far from the 250 soldierswho were in the mass grave, as of 2024 there are still 70 remaining unidentified soldiers. Family DNA donors are needed to find out if Jack could be one of these unidentified soldiers.