Sergeant Richard Cecil Johnson
Title
Sergeant Richard Cecil Johnson
Identifier
P.003
Bibliographic Citation
Queensland Births, Deaths and Marriages, C10000, 1888 (Birth).
Queensland Births, Deaths and Marriages, B28378, 1921 (Marriage).
Queensland Births, Deaths and Marriages, C902, 1935 (Marriage).
Queensland Births, Deaths and Marriages, C7168, 1972 (Death).
New South Wales Births, Deaths and Marriages, 10603, 1925 (Death).
5th Light Horse Regiment, Australian Imperial Force unit war diaries, 1914-18 War, AWM4 10/10/1-55, Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
JOHNSON Richard Cecil: Service Number - 157, First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920, box B2455, Johnson Richard Cecil, National Archives of Australia.
Gracemere Cemetery Index, Rockhampton Regional Council. Retrieved: https://www.rockhamptonregion.qld.gov.au/Council-Services/Cemeteries/Burial-Indexes
Johnson, RC, 197-, 'His Book', Rockhampton.
Wilson, LC & Wetherell, H, 1926, 'History of the Fifth Light Horse Regiment, 1914 - 1919', Motor Press, Sydney.
Bean, CW 1946, 'Anzac to Amiens', Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
Johnson Family Papers, Private Collection, Brisbane.
'Australian Casualties', Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, 21 May 1915, p. 7.
Relation
C.003.001
Contributor
Mr James Donaldson
Biographical Text
Richard Cecil Johnson was born on 24 January 1888, the youngest son of Ellen (nee Morrison) and Henry Johnson’s 14 children, six of whom died in infancy. Ellen and Henry emigrated to Australia from England in 1887 on the RMS Dacca and Richard was born at the Rockhampton migrant depot at Depot Hill. His father worked odd jobs and eventually saved enough money to purchase land at Gracemere which he and his sons cleared for use as a dairy farm. Their first property was named Londesborough, after the village in Yorkshire where Ellen and Henry were married. This property was subject to flooding and sometime later they purchased another property, Maudsley Hill.
When Richard was 19 years old his father died, aged only 56. Richard and his younger sister Laura continued to live at Maudsley Hill with their mother. They often missed school to help prepare produce for sale at the Rockhampton markets. Richard was known to be a good horseman and served 7 years as a Squadron Sergeant with the 15th Queensland Mounted Infantry (after 1912 the 1st Central Queensland Light Horse).
On 23 September 1914 Richard enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at Rockhampton, aged 26 years; his service number was 157. Part of B Squadron of the 5th Light Horse Regiment, Richard departed Sydney on the HMAT Persic on 21 December 1914. The voyage to Alexandria, via Albany and Aden, took 42 days. During the voyage Richard was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. On 1 February 1915 the 5th Light Horse Regiment arrived in Alexandria and immediately travelled to Ma’adi camp near Cairo where they spent three months training.
During this time, a family story relates that Richard attended a lecture by a British academic who had recently opened an Egyptian tomb. At the end of the lecture, the academic offered artefacts for sale to the troops and Richard purchased a green faience shabti figure for a man named Padi-Hor-Mehen dating to the Egyptian late period for 5 shillings. This was almost an entire day’s pay for an Australian soldier and apparently there was not a lot of other interest from those attending the lecture.
On 16 May 1915 the 5th Light Horse Regiment sailed to Gallipoli, where Australian infantry of the 3rd Brigade had first landed a month earlier on 25 April 1915. The Regiment arrived at ANZAC Cove on 20 May 1915 and disembarked in daylight under very heavy fire. They were immediately ordered to Monash Gully and held in reserve against an expected attack that night. In late June 1915 the Regiment moved to the southern (right) flank of ANZAC where they remained until evacuation in December 1915. Many landmarks in this area where named after members of the 5th Light Horse Regiment, including Chatham’s Post, Harris Ridge and Wilson’s Lookout.
Richard was promoted to Corporal on 9 August 1915 and would have taken part in the various actions by the 5th Light Horse Regiment, including a demonstration against Gaba Tepe on 28 June, preparations for an offensive in early August (later cancelled), and an offensive in late August where his B Squadron were positioned on the beach to provide supporting fire. Patrols to the south along Harris Ridge and the beach were also frequent.
Richard’s B Squadron had their bivouacs at the mouth of Wright’s Gully. In a newspaper article from the 1960s a fellow 5th Light Horseman, Ethelbert Glenn Laurance (Service Number 80), remembers Richard, known by his nickname “Johnno”, playing a tin whistle one evening at Gallipoli, probably in this area.
Life at Gallipoli was very difficult: soldiers were constantly excavating trenches to improve and expand defences and were expected to sleep in their uniforms and boots. In some cases soldiers were on duty for two or three successive nights with only one night off. As a result, and due to the poor quality of rations and lack of water, sickness was widespread.
On 10 September 1915 Richard was evacuated on the HS Neuralia to St John’s Military Hospital at Sliema, Malta, suffering from debility, a condition characterised by general weakness. After 11 days he was discharged to All Saint’s Convalescent Camp on Malta and then embarked on the HS Karoa for Alexandria and then the HS Borda for Gallipoli. He re-joined his unit on 25 October 1915 where they were suffering under ever worsening conditions. November was spent constructing a new position, Wilson’s Lookout, in response to new Ottoman works in the area.
By late November the unit was suffering from very poor weather including rain and snow, resulting in several cases of frostbite. Supplies were short due to the imminent evacuation and on 13 December 1915, a week before the Regiment withdrew from Gallipoli, Richard was again evacuated to hospital with debility, this time to the 3rd Australian General Hospital on Lemnos. His service record suggest that he had been sick since the last week of November. On 27 December 1915 he was transferred to Egypt and admitted to the 2nd Australian General Hospital at Ghezireh, Cairo. He returned to duty with his unit, now at Ma’adi camp, on 2 January 1916.
The 5th Light Horse Regiment stayed at Ma’adi camp until 23 February 1916, during which time Richard was prompted to Temporary Sergeant. The unit then moved to Serapeum, south of Ismailia on the Suez canal, where B Squadron reinforced the defences on the canal’s east bank against possible Ottoman attack. In April the unit, now part of the ANZAC Mounted Division, moved again to behind the lines at Salhia and undertook a period of training. Here Richard was promoted to full Sergeant and at the end of April the unit moved out in the Sinai desert for the first time, to reinforce the 5th Yeomanry Brigade at Katia Oasis. During the journey, Dueidar Oasis was attacked and the Regiment was ordered to advance and reinforce the British 5th Mounted Yeomanry Brigade there.
April to August saw the unit involved in frequent patrols, usually overnight, to reconnoitre enemy positions in Sinai as part of the allied build-up in this area. However, on 30 June 1916 Richard was evacuated to the 2nd Australian Stationary Hospital at Tel el-Kebir with septic feet, before being transferred to the 3rd Australian General Hospital at Abbassia in Cairo. After a week of treatment he was transferred again to the convalescent hospital at Montazah, Alexandria. Two weeks later Richard returned to his unit at Dueidar, where it was involved in patrolling activities.
During the Battle of Romani on 3 August 1916, the regiment was held in reserve at Dueidar and in the following days moved east as part of the allied counter attack against the Ottomans. Throughout August and September the unit continued to advance east and took part in numerous patrols to ascertain Ottoman positions in the Sinai. These patrols were exhausting, long-range movements usually undertaken overnight and with limited rations. On one such patrol, the regiment captured and rescued 68 Ottoman soldiers who were part of a patrol lost in the desert.
Early in October Richard was transferred to the 2nd Light Horse Training Regiment and spent two months at the Imperial School of Instruction at Moascar. There he qualified as an instructor in the Lewis and Hotchkiss machine gun course in December 1916. Richard spent the next seven months with the 2nd Light Horse Training Regiment, teaching other soldiers about how to operate and maintain the different machine guns used by Australians in Sinai and Palestine.
On 15 July 1917, Richard returned to his regiment, now at Um Urgan on the Wadi Ghuzze in southern Palestine. Here the unit was involved in patrols from their lines along the Wadi Ghuzze to various sites including Esani, el-Buqqar, Sufi, and Ingeig, before a period of rest behind the line at Tel el-Marakeb from mid-August.
On 31 October the Regiment was involved in the Battle of Beersheba, moving out from Asluj on 30 October to pass around Beersheba and attack Tel el-Sakaty to the north and cut off Ottoman reinforcements. Following the successful attack on Beersheba the regiment pushed north via ed-Dhaheriye in pursuit of Ottoman forces falling back to the north. This rapid advance brought the regiment to the Wadi Hanein (Hunayn) region of Jerusalem, which was subsequently captured on 9 December 1917. Early 1918 was spent resting behind the lines around Esdud (Ashdod) and the Wadi Hanein, and in March, parties from the Regiment were permitted to visit Jerusalem.
In late February 1918 the regiment moved out from near Jerusalem to take part in the First Battle of Amman. Allied forces crossed the Jordan River and under very wet and difficult conditions advanced on Amman. The attack was ultimately unsuccessful. In April the regiment again crossed the Jordan on a long mission towards es-Salt but the town was captured before they arrived and they were redirected against a counterattack out of Amman which was repulsed.
May 1918 was spent behind the lines in various training and support tasks, including digging trenches, erecting wire and improving roads. In June Richard proceeded with a large number of the Regiment to the rest camp at Port Said for a month’s well-earned leave. After a spell at the Training Regiment in July, Richard returned to his regiment near Solomon’s Pools, Jerusalem in mid-August. On his return the unit was engaged in reconnaissance work in preparation for another great Allied advance in September. During this advance the regiment was tasked with returning across the Jordan to again try and capture Amman. On 25 September 1918, during the successful attack on Amman, Richard received a severe gunshot wound to his right shoulder and was evacuated to the 34th Casualty Clearing Hospital at Jerusalem before being sent to hospital in Egypt for several months. During this time an armistice was signed with the Ottomans, ending the war in the eastern theatre and in April 1919 Richard embarked on the HT Kildonian Castle for Australia via Suez, arriving on 12 May 1919. He was eventually discharged on medical grounds on 19 September 1920, after spending a period of time at Rosemount Military Hospital in Windsor. Richard received the 1914/15 Star, British War Medal and Victory medal for his service.
On 12 August 1921 Richard married Grace Cecilia Thomson in Alderley, Brisbane. They had first met when Richard was in Brisbane for a shooting competition. They had 5 children: Sylvia, John, Thelma, George and Pamela.
Richard’s brothers had named their properties over places in Yorkshire with relevance to the family, but Richard broke with this tradition to name his property, a pineapple farm, Tel-Manzar (roughly translating to View from a Hill). Richard had learnt some Arabic during the war in order to communicate with Egyptian Labour Corps members who were in charge of the pack camels that accompanied the Australians across the Sinai and into Palestine.
Grace died on 29 November 1933 and on 18 February 1935 Richard was married a second time to Doris Mary Duncan (nee Park) in Rockhampton. Doris was a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at Rosemount Hospital in Windsor, Brisbane, and the widow of Albert Duncan (died 1925), a soldier with the 42nd Battalion (service number 3029) who developed an inflamed spinal cord while on the Western Front in 1917 and was left a paraplegic. Doris and Richard had one child, David.
On 26 October 1972 Richard died in Rockhampton and was buried in the Methodist section of the Gracemere Cemetery, Row RB 2, Grave 3. Doris outlived Richard, dying on 9 March 1986. A book of Richard’s poetry was posthumously published by the family, entitled “His Book”.
When Richard was 19 years old his father died, aged only 56. Richard and his younger sister Laura continued to live at Maudsley Hill with their mother. They often missed school to help prepare produce for sale at the Rockhampton markets. Richard was known to be a good horseman and served 7 years as a Squadron Sergeant with the 15th Queensland Mounted Infantry (after 1912 the 1st Central Queensland Light Horse).
On 23 September 1914 Richard enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at Rockhampton, aged 26 years; his service number was 157. Part of B Squadron of the 5th Light Horse Regiment, Richard departed Sydney on the HMAT Persic on 21 December 1914. The voyage to Alexandria, via Albany and Aden, took 42 days. During the voyage Richard was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. On 1 February 1915 the 5th Light Horse Regiment arrived in Alexandria and immediately travelled to Ma’adi camp near Cairo where they spent three months training.
During this time, a family story relates that Richard attended a lecture by a British academic who had recently opened an Egyptian tomb. At the end of the lecture, the academic offered artefacts for sale to the troops and Richard purchased a green faience shabti figure for a man named Padi-Hor-Mehen dating to the Egyptian late period for 5 shillings. This was almost an entire day’s pay for an Australian soldier and apparently there was not a lot of other interest from those attending the lecture.
On 16 May 1915 the 5th Light Horse Regiment sailed to Gallipoli, where Australian infantry of the 3rd Brigade had first landed a month earlier on 25 April 1915. The Regiment arrived at ANZAC Cove on 20 May 1915 and disembarked in daylight under very heavy fire. They were immediately ordered to Monash Gully and held in reserve against an expected attack that night. In late June 1915 the Regiment moved to the southern (right) flank of ANZAC where they remained until evacuation in December 1915. Many landmarks in this area where named after members of the 5th Light Horse Regiment, including Chatham’s Post, Harris Ridge and Wilson’s Lookout.
Richard was promoted to Corporal on 9 August 1915 and would have taken part in the various actions by the 5th Light Horse Regiment, including a demonstration against Gaba Tepe on 28 June, preparations for an offensive in early August (later cancelled), and an offensive in late August where his B Squadron were positioned on the beach to provide supporting fire. Patrols to the south along Harris Ridge and the beach were also frequent.
Richard’s B Squadron had their bivouacs at the mouth of Wright’s Gully. In a newspaper article from the 1960s a fellow 5th Light Horseman, Ethelbert Glenn Laurance (Service Number 80), remembers Richard, known by his nickname “Johnno”, playing a tin whistle one evening at Gallipoli, probably in this area.
Life at Gallipoli was very difficult: soldiers were constantly excavating trenches to improve and expand defences and were expected to sleep in their uniforms and boots. In some cases soldiers were on duty for two or three successive nights with only one night off. As a result, and due to the poor quality of rations and lack of water, sickness was widespread.
On 10 September 1915 Richard was evacuated on the HS Neuralia to St John’s Military Hospital at Sliema, Malta, suffering from debility, a condition characterised by general weakness. After 11 days he was discharged to All Saint’s Convalescent Camp on Malta and then embarked on the HS Karoa for Alexandria and then the HS Borda for Gallipoli. He re-joined his unit on 25 October 1915 where they were suffering under ever worsening conditions. November was spent constructing a new position, Wilson’s Lookout, in response to new Ottoman works in the area.
By late November the unit was suffering from very poor weather including rain and snow, resulting in several cases of frostbite. Supplies were short due to the imminent evacuation and on 13 December 1915, a week before the Regiment withdrew from Gallipoli, Richard was again evacuated to hospital with debility, this time to the 3rd Australian General Hospital on Lemnos. His service record suggest that he had been sick since the last week of November. On 27 December 1915 he was transferred to Egypt and admitted to the 2nd Australian General Hospital at Ghezireh, Cairo. He returned to duty with his unit, now at Ma’adi camp, on 2 January 1916.
The 5th Light Horse Regiment stayed at Ma’adi camp until 23 February 1916, during which time Richard was prompted to Temporary Sergeant. The unit then moved to Serapeum, south of Ismailia on the Suez canal, where B Squadron reinforced the defences on the canal’s east bank against possible Ottoman attack. In April the unit, now part of the ANZAC Mounted Division, moved again to behind the lines at Salhia and undertook a period of training. Here Richard was promoted to full Sergeant and at the end of April the unit moved out in the Sinai desert for the first time, to reinforce the 5th Yeomanry Brigade at Katia Oasis. During the journey, Dueidar Oasis was attacked and the Regiment was ordered to advance and reinforce the British 5th Mounted Yeomanry Brigade there.
April to August saw the unit involved in frequent patrols, usually overnight, to reconnoitre enemy positions in Sinai as part of the allied build-up in this area. However, on 30 June 1916 Richard was evacuated to the 2nd Australian Stationary Hospital at Tel el-Kebir with septic feet, before being transferred to the 3rd Australian General Hospital at Abbassia in Cairo. After a week of treatment he was transferred again to the convalescent hospital at Montazah, Alexandria. Two weeks later Richard returned to his unit at Dueidar, where it was involved in patrolling activities.
During the Battle of Romani on 3 August 1916, the regiment was held in reserve at Dueidar and in the following days moved east as part of the allied counter attack against the Ottomans. Throughout August and September the unit continued to advance east and took part in numerous patrols to ascertain Ottoman positions in the Sinai. These patrols were exhausting, long-range movements usually undertaken overnight and with limited rations. On one such patrol, the regiment captured and rescued 68 Ottoman soldiers who were part of a patrol lost in the desert.
Early in October Richard was transferred to the 2nd Light Horse Training Regiment and spent two months at the Imperial School of Instruction at Moascar. There he qualified as an instructor in the Lewis and Hotchkiss machine gun course in December 1916. Richard spent the next seven months with the 2nd Light Horse Training Regiment, teaching other soldiers about how to operate and maintain the different machine guns used by Australians in Sinai and Palestine.
On 15 July 1917, Richard returned to his regiment, now at Um Urgan on the Wadi Ghuzze in southern Palestine. Here the unit was involved in patrols from their lines along the Wadi Ghuzze to various sites including Esani, el-Buqqar, Sufi, and Ingeig, before a period of rest behind the line at Tel el-Marakeb from mid-August.
On 31 October the Regiment was involved in the Battle of Beersheba, moving out from Asluj on 30 October to pass around Beersheba and attack Tel el-Sakaty to the north and cut off Ottoman reinforcements. Following the successful attack on Beersheba the regiment pushed north via ed-Dhaheriye in pursuit of Ottoman forces falling back to the north. This rapid advance brought the regiment to the Wadi Hanein (Hunayn) region of Jerusalem, which was subsequently captured on 9 December 1917. Early 1918 was spent resting behind the lines around Esdud (Ashdod) and the Wadi Hanein, and in March, parties from the Regiment were permitted to visit Jerusalem.
In late February 1918 the regiment moved out from near Jerusalem to take part in the First Battle of Amman. Allied forces crossed the Jordan River and under very wet and difficult conditions advanced on Amman. The attack was ultimately unsuccessful. In April the regiment again crossed the Jordan on a long mission towards es-Salt but the town was captured before they arrived and they were redirected against a counterattack out of Amman which was repulsed.
May 1918 was spent behind the lines in various training and support tasks, including digging trenches, erecting wire and improving roads. In June Richard proceeded with a large number of the Regiment to the rest camp at Port Said for a month’s well-earned leave. After a spell at the Training Regiment in July, Richard returned to his regiment near Solomon’s Pools, Jerusalem in mid-August. On his return the unit was engaged in reconnaissance work in preparation for another great Allied advance in September. During this advance the regiment was tasked with returning across the Jordan to again try and capture Amman. On 25 September 1918, during the successful attack on Amman, Richard received a severe gunshot wound to his right shoulder and was evacuated to the 34th Casualty Clearing Hospital at Jerusalem before being sent to hospital in Egypt for several months. During this time an armistice was signed with the Ottomans, ending the war in the eastern theatre and in April 1919 Richard embarked on the HT Kildonian Castle for Australia via Suez, arriving on 12 May 1919. He was eventually discharged on medical grounds on 19 September 1920, after spending a period of time at Rosemount Military Hospital in Windsor. Richard received the 1914/15 Star, British War Medal and Victory medal for his service.
On 12 August 1921 Richard married Grace Cecilia Thomson in Alderley, Brisbane. They had first met when Richard was in Brisbane for a shooting competition. They had 5 children: Sylvia, John, Thelma, George and Pamela.
Richard’s brothers had named their properties over places in Yorkshire with relevance to the family, but Richard broke with this tradition to name his property, a pineapple farm, Tel-Manzar (roughly translating to View from a Hill). Richard had learnt some Arabic during the war in order to communicate with Egyptian Labour Corps members who were in charge of the pack camels that accompanied the Australians across the Sinai and into Palestine.
Grace died on 29 November 1933 and on 18 February 1935 Richard was married a second time to Doris Mary Duncan (nee Park) in Rockhampton. Doris was a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at Rosemount Hospital in Windsor, Brisbane, and the widow of Albert Duncan (died 1925), a soldier with the 42nd Battalion (service number 3029) who developed an inflamed spinal cord while on the Western Front in 1917 and was left a paraplegic. Doris and Richard had one child, David.
On 26 October 1972 Richard died in Rockhampton and was buried in the Methodist section of the Gracemere Cemetery, Row RB 2, Grave 3. Doris outlived Richard, dying on 9 March 1986. A book of Richard’s poetry was posthumously published by the family, entitled “His Book”.
Rank
Sergeant
Occupation
5th Australian Light Horse Regiment
Birth Date
24/01/1888
Birthplace
Death Date
26/10/1972
Death Place
Files
Collection
Citation
“Sergeant Richard Cecil Johnson,” First World War Antiquities, accessed April 26, 2024, https://ww1antiquities.omeka.net/items/show/50.
Item Relations
| This Item | frbr:ownerOf | Item: Shabti for Padi-(Hor)-Mehen |
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