CORPORAL Thomas Johnson, a 34-year-old Gallipoli veteran who was born at Woomargama, north of Albury, and killed in France on August 5, 1916, has achieved an unexpected form of immortality.
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The father of four was the subject of one of the few works of art to come out of the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign. It is a 23-centimetre by 13-centimetre cigar box lid portrait, painted by Frank Crozier.
Kept in a drawer along with the postcards and letters Johnson sent home from Egypt, Gallipoli and France in 1915 and 1916, the significance of the modest picture was not appreciated until the early 1990s.
That was when Corporal Johnson’s relics passed into the custody of his granddaughter, Maureen Blackmore, of Pearce in the ACT.
Crozier, who had been working as a stretcher-bearer in Gallipoli when he met Johnson, was later drafted by official war correspondent Charles Bean to work on illustrations for The Anzac Book, a diversion for the Diggers.
The Victorian-born artist, who had been a member of the Charterisville artists’ colony at Heidelberg in Melbourne before the war, did such a good job he was attached to the 1st Anzac Corps Topographical Section in 1917.
Crozier was appointed an official war artist in 1918, reportedly on Bean’s recommendation.
“My grandfather (Johnson) seemed to attract varied friendships,” Mrs Blackmore said.
“Crozier was taken with his strong facial bone structure and asked whether he could do a portrait of him.
“There were few materials readily to hand but the lid of a cigar box and charcoal served him well.”
By 1993, time and tide had wrought havoc on the highly ephemeral portrait and Mrs Johnson realised action was needed if it was to survive.
“I also believed it needed to be shared with other people, not just kept in the family,” she said.
“I saw it both before and after and have to say the Australian War Memorial did a wonderful job on the restoration.
“The cigar box lid was very fragile and you could still read the name of the company on the front.”
Jean McAuslan, the curator of sculpture and graphic art at the war memorial in 1993, was delighted with the unexpected donation.
“There are few portraits by Crozier in the collection and so this painting is an important addition,” she said in a letter to Mrs Blackmore.
“The fact he executed it on the lid of a cigar box makes it particularly interesting.”
Dr Peter Pedersen, the author of Anzac Treasures and a former acting assistant director at the national war memorial, said the Crozier portrait highlighted the types of treasures that would likely be unearthed over the next few years as families revisited their drawers and boxes of War World I memorabilia.
“Just in recent weeks I have come across a number of instances of significant documents and artefacts coming to light,” he said.
“I was approached at a recent history conference by a person who had a letter written by one of the soldiers in the first wave at Gallipoli,” he said.
“He handed it to a crew member just before he climbed into the boat.
“ He was concerned he would probably never see his family again.”
The letter was sent and the soldier survived. Dr Pedersen said the letter, and the Digger’s Gallipoli diaries, held by the family were of great significance.
He has urged people with significant artefacts, which may include documents, letters, trench art and even enemy souvenirs, to consider giving them to the Australian War Memorial or a local institution for safe keeping.
“The first generation could never bear to part with these things,” he said. “They were too personal. Today it is a question of making sure they are preserved for the next 100 years and beyond.”
After leaving Woomargama, Corporal Johnson established himself in Melbourne with his wife, Anetta Lucretia Johnson (Lou), and their four children by the time war broke out.
He signed up on April 3, 1915, and arrived at Gallipoli on August 30. The writing was already on the wall and by the end of December, Corporal Johnson and his mates had gone.
It had been a hard slog for the labourer turned warrior, a fact reflected in a letter dated September 22, 1915.
“It seems years since I left home. You know that I was always a dead homer (homebody) but we are over here now. We intend to do our little share of the fighting just the same as others have done before us,” he wrote.
An air of fatalism, that only grew stronger, had already taken hold.
“It will be pretty bad here in winter if we have not settled with Turkey before then. I only hope that we will be able to strike a final blow before wet weather sets in.”
By January 7, 1916, he was back in Egypt awaiting deployment to France.
The Diggers were well aware of what awaited on the Western Front.
In a letter from this period of gloom, Corporal Johnson wrote: “Darling if anything should happen to me, don’t forget your promise to look after the children and also look after yourself.”
He arrived in France on March 26, 1916. From this point on, he mainly communicated with the family through postcards, often beautifully decorated by Belgian women using scraps of silk and other fabrics. They cost seven pence each to send.
“I will send more of these cards later on, that is if the Germans don’t hit me,” he wrote on April 11, 1916.
On July 30, the same day his military records indicate he was wounded in action and made an acting corporal, he wrote a letter to his wife that indicated he was in a very dark place.
“I cannot close this letter without saying a few words to you,” he wrote. “I feel that there is a very poor chance of seeing any of you again but I hope you will stick by the children and that they will also stick by you.”
Six days later, Corporal Johnson was dead, killed in action during the fighting at Pozieres.
Mrs Johnson — who bore the responsibility for raising the couple’s children, Alma, Phyllis, Norman and Gladys, alone — was finally issued with a war pension of four pounds and 15 shillings a fortnight ($9.50) on November 8, 1916.
Forty shillings of that was for her and the rest was for the children.
“Grandmother never remarried,” Mrs Blackmore said.
“She worked as a baby-sitter for some very well-known families in Melbourne and used to run a market stall selling the clothes they used to give her (when their children grew out of them).
“My father, who was only four when Thomas left, had hardly any memories of him.”
The tale did not end with Corporal Johnson’s death.
All four of the children were Legatees and, in 1927, Norman, then 17, was attending a camp at Rosebud in Victoria.
“Someone pointed out a man walking past as being the artist, Frank Crozier,” Mrs Blackmore said.
“My father reminded him of the soldier he had sketched on that other beach. Crozier’s response was to portray, in turn, the son. This time he had oils and canvas. This portrait is part of our family’s treasured memorabilia.”
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