John Ellwood Boadle – a reminder that not all who ‘gave their lives for their country’ in the First World War died on the battlefield. Poor conditions in makeshift training camps at home were a recipe for ill health.
Who was John Ellwood Boadle ?
John Ellwood Boadle was born in Keswick in 1894, one of six children of James and Sarah (née Ellwood) Boadle. The 1911 census shows them living at 3 Southey Street, with 16-year-old John listed as an errand boy.
When the war began, in August 1914, he was working as a bus driver. But just two months later, he enlisted in the Border Regiment. Shrugging off a cough he had been suffering since January that year.
He was 5’ 6” tall (an average height for men at the time), weighed just over 9 stone, and had brown hair and hazel eyes – and a tattoo on his right forearm saying: ‘True love’.
Despite his cough – perhaps he hid it – he was attested fit for service on October 5, 1914, and assigned to the Lonsdale Battalion of the Border Regiment, at Blackhall training camp.
This battalion had been raised and was being trained by Lieutenant Colonel Percy Wilfred Machell, who merits a separate article.
Blackhall training camp
A report by Machell to Lord Lonsdale, dated October 30, 1914, shows that not only was Blackhall struggling to cope with housing 800 men (of the targeted 1,000), but that:
“We have had to evacuate the tents… as the water came through”
Source: here:
The damp and outright wet would not have helped John Ellwood Boadle. Nor would the winter that followed, often ‘severely cold’ and with the main activities seemingly marching and parades, with the occasional game of football, plus boxing competitions.
On November 29, 1914, Machell reported:
“The weather is awful & there is a lot of mild sort of influenza – in fact it is just a matter of ‘how bad’ everyone is, but it will do us all good.”
Two months later, and with reports of heavy rain, and some men suffering from flu, the Local Government Board found many of the men at Blackhall Camp were having to sleep in poorly vented loose boxes:
“I think that the conditions at Blackhall Farm are such as to be prejudicial to the health of the men and that no time should be lost in providing more suitable accommodation”
While in March 1915, a tender from John Hewitson, St. Nicholas slate works was submitted in regards to those sleeping in the old racing stables:
“to point up and repair to prevent snow etc. drifting on to the beds”
Over-crowded – and bored
In April, many were itching to get to the front and action. While skilled men were asking to be released to be of use in armament workshops, and locals were mocking the regiment for going nowhere.
It was also recorded that six of the over-crowded horse boxes being used as billets were occupied by the sick members of the company.
In May 1915, 29 officers and 1,100 ranks finally left Blackhall, to join up with three Highland battalions at Prees Heath, Shropshire. Where they played a lot of cricket.
There were frequent discharges of men on medical grounds, in the reports from 1914 on. And then:
10 June 1915 Prees Heath: Daily orders: 11 men found permanently unfit for service abroad transferred to Depot [Carlisle].
One of these is likely to have been John Ellwood Boadle, given his record shows he was posted to depot on 12/6/1915.The 12 Reserve Depot was formed from the Depot Companies, and was to remain in the UK.
Ablutions
John Ellwood Boadle arrived just in time for a new Depot order:
‘There will be a Bathing Parade on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.’
There were no baths at the Camp and the soldiers had to use the public ones in Carlisle. The latrines seem to have been buckets, emptied when full into an open trench.
‘No picnic’
Those still at Prees Heath moved to another camp, Wensley, at Leyburn – but the farmers’ sons and farm workers wished to be released for the hay harvest. And by August 1915, there were at times 62 Depot men reported as being on sick leave.
And Lieutenant Colonel Machell, visiting the front line, reported back:
“It is no picnic this Trench warfare, and one wonders where the end of it all can be.”
Back home,the Leyburn contingent had been moved to Salisbury Plain, where they were dealing with scabies, and using jam tins for bomb-throwing practice.
But in November 1915, 30 officers and 993 other ranks were ordered to France.
Many would never return.
On the front line
After months where casualties were in single or double figures (bad enough), the battalion took part – on July 1, 1916 – in the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
On that terrible day, it suffered more than 500 casualties, including 15 officers injured and ten officers killed. Among the dead was the valiant Lieutenant Colonel Machell.
A painful disease
On September 29, 1916, the ‘active’ regiment was ‘in reserve’ at Annezin, Pas de Calais – a short respite from the front line.
Back in England, the Army’s Medical Board recorded that day that John had:
“Acute active tubercular disease in right elbow, left knee and lungs. Not result of, but aggravated by military service.”
He had been transferred at the start of the month to the Border Regiment’s 75th Training Reserve – which absorbed the whole of the 12th Reserve.. But a week after the medical report, he was discharged as no longer physically fit for war service, and awarded a pension of £1 a week.
He was to die from his illness on April 18, 1917. He doesn’t seem to feature in any roll of honour, and whatever he hoped or imagined when he enlisted, it wasn’t to be.
But that sense of duty and service still merited him being buried with a soldier’s headstone, in the churchyard of St John’s, Keswick.