John Murch Trench Raider - Arras 1918

One of 15 children of William and Sarah Murch (Sarah always called Lizzie by her family) of Higher Batson, Nr Salcombe, John left the family farm at the age of 15 and emigrated to Saskatchewan,. Following his brothers Harry, Stan, Tom, sister Dolly and Ben, he had high hopes for his future after being tempted by the opportunity, and encouraged by his father William, to take up the offer of prairie land available to establish a homestead and farm. On 5th June 1913, John gained a plot of land of 160 acres in Shaunavon.  It was his intention to farm the land, as his brothers were already doing nearby on similar plots.  

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When war broke out expatriates in Canada were encouraged to join up to support their home country.  After long discussions with his brothers over who should enlist John joined the 152nd Battalion Saskatchewan Regiment on December 2nd 1915.  He was part of the second wave of enlistment drives by the government as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF).  John was sent to Camp Hughes to do his basic training.

Camp Hughes was a huge WW1 Training Camp, located near Brandon, Manitoba.  The current Canadian Forces Base Shilo, is located at approximately the same spot today.  The camp trained over 30,000 at any given time and was a virtual city of tents, two cinemas, stores, leisure facilities - including the largest outdoor heated pool in Canada, and extensive training areas including fully equipped and revetted practice trenches.

After months of basic training John and his newly formed clan of friends (all sergeants) were transported by ship from Halifax to Britain – the ship was packed with hundreds of ordinary ranks, officers, equipment and horses.  They sailed on the SS Missanabie on 3rd October 1916 to Liverpool. John was a sergeant was accompanied by his best friend, John Parker, when he disembarked the SS Missanabie on the 13th October 1916. Throughout the war, the two friends faced every fear and hardship, battle and attack together side by side.

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On arrival back in Britain, John was stationed at Shorncliff Camp in Kent and was not shipped to France until he relinquished his rank, along with all his friends. On arriving in France the battalion settled into a period of waiting in the reserve camps behind the lines, they were then dispersed to new Battalions – for John and his best friend, the 5th Battalion. Their first experience of the trenches was working in parties to rebuild trenches damaged by continuous rain and snow that had left men cold, wet and miserable over the winter.

His first major battle was at Vimy.  Vimy Ridge is a seven-kilometre-long hill rising amid the open countryside north of Arras. To the east of the ridge was German occupied territory on the Douai plain; to the west, the British lines. The Ridge had been in the hands of the Germans since the early days of the war and provided them with good observation on the Allied rear area, while denying the Allies a view of the wide Douai Plain behind.  The French had made an unsuccessful attempt to take the ridge in May 1915. Thought their operation failed, the areas was a constant thorn in the side of the Allied armies.  As a result, Vimy Ridge, was one of the most heavily defended points on the whole Western Front.

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9th April 1917.

Following the issue of orders and maps with positions marked, the men gathered in position awaiting the ‘curtain up’.  Four Battalions of the Canadian forces were instructed to take up positions at four points around the ridge.

Army engineers also dug extensive tunnels under the battlefield to bring the infantry more safely and closely to the German lines. The men approached through the tunnels to emerge at curtain up.

After a week of intense Allied bombardment, the Canadian Corps attacked the ridge at 5:30 am on 9 April, Easter Monday, or Bloody Easter as it was known later. Timing and co-ordination were critical — the troops moved up the long western slope of the ridge, just behind a rolling artillery barrage designed to keep the Germans hidden in their bunkers and away from their machine guns as long as possible.

In wind, sleet and snow, an initial wave of more than 15,000 Canadians stormed the ridge and captured most of the German positions by the afternoon of the first day.

As John ran across the battlefield he was shot in the shoulder and lungs. Cold, and no doubt in great pain, it would be many hours before the stretcher bearer crews found him and took him to the dressing station.   The next morning his mother received a telegram informing her that John was missing presumed killed in action.

Once the Battle of Vimy Ridge was over the many thousands of casualties were counted and accounted for.  John was one of the casualties.

Canadian casualties amounted to 10,602, of which 3,598 were fatal. The Canadian Corps had achieved the greatest single Allied advance on the Western Front, to that point in the war.

However, John had survived but was badly wounded.  The roll had been called and John was listed as missing as he lay buried in a shell hole in no mans land.  His name was posted in the Winnipeg Chronicle as being missing in action.

John was shipped to the number 32 Stationary Hospital at Wimereux, which was also known as the Australian Voluntary Hospital.  His temperature was beginning to rise as infection set in. This was before penicillin was available to deal with infection.  Two days after he was found John was flagged as a ‘Blighty’ case to be shipped back to England.

Four days later he was shipped back to the Ontario Military Hospital in Orpington in Kent, arriving there on 16th Apr 1917.  His wound was a clean ‘through and through’.  He was quickly stabilised and started to recover. After two months in hospital in Britain recovering from his gunshot wound, John was transferred from the Ontario Military Hospital to the Canadian Convalescent Hospital in Bromley. He stayed only for a couple of days until 12 Jun 1917. .  He transferred to 2nd Canadian Convalescent Depot, Bramshott - 18 Jun 1917 from where he was declared fit.  John returned home to Salcombe to recuperate.  Only two months later he was recalled to the front lines.

John returned to his regiment.  The 5th Battalion had remained in the same area around Arras, although the battle lines were now slightly further to the east.  The Germans  had launched their spring offensive with many thousands of extra troops moved to the Western front from the Eastern Front.  Several battlefronts were opened up, some as a diversion from the main thrust of the German offensive. They were headed by Stormtroopers who were fighting a last ditch campaign to move forward from the war of attrition to a war of movement.  The Allied forces were faced with desperate, starving, aggressive enemy troops. However, the weight of the Allied forces was backed up with enormous amounts of armaments, planes, tanks, reinforcements and American troops, who had also joined the lines.  Johns experience of both training and the front lines had resulted in a soldier who was one of the more experienced fighters.  John had taken further training and became a specialist trench raider with a small group of 20.  The small band of raiders were so stealthy that the small group  spent almost every night in No Mans Land reconnoitring the enemy lines.  This type of observation was essential for forward planning and the Canadian forces had perfected the art of raiding. Raiding parties like Johns lived at great risk of death but were the lynchpins of any successful raid.  Any man entering No Mans Land at any time knew that death was a certainty if caught by the enemy.  In fact, being spotted by their own troops could result in mistaken firing in the darkness.  John was fearless and put his life on the line every time he ventured out.

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July 26th 1918

A large raid was planned for July.  The Battalion's "Scouts, trench raiders and sniper section" was put in to action for weeks in the build up to the raid.  For nine nights preceding the raid the band of 20 raiders (both John and Parker were in this unit) dodged the almost constant barrage from the Canadian and British heavy artillery to scout the enemy lines, reporting back on the enemy facing them: numbers of enemy troops, which German Battalions were in opposite positions, location of machine guns, the layout of the enemy trenches and barricade positions in particular.  During their night raids each night, they would cut the wire and note where it was impossible to do so, whereupon the artillery would target the wire prior to the raid in order to cut a route through.  The best route for the attacking parties was worked out based on the scouts information.  Then on the night of the raid the small group would lead the parties of raiders through no-man's land and enemy wire in order to push men through quickly.   

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During the night preceding the raid, hundreds of men moved stealthily into underground tunnels.  Men then sat to wait for the signal.  John and the forward party crept out into No Mans Land from the tunnels, under cover of darkness, and silently began to occupy shell holes and pits in the area only yards from the German lines.  As the rain fell overnight and the temperature dropped, the forward party waited.  All forms of identification were removed, they wore no I.D. tags or badges of any kind, but each man had been issued with a number for the officers to identify returning men when they reached home trenches.  The barrage was heavy and only minutes before curtain up the artillery increased its shelling tenfold.  As whistles blew to begin the advance, men rose up out of the tunnels to find the forward party waiting to lead them forward through enemy barricades. 

The creeping barrage was supposed to provide smoke cover and prevent the Germans leaving their dugouts.  Under cover of falling smoke shells, the men progressed forward quickly and into enemy trenches, inflicting as many casualties to the enemy as possible – 200 followed the lead party followed by hundreds more in waves every 15 minutes, fanning out and covered by machine gunners to left and right, with Engineers behind each company, providing bombs to blow out the enemy trenches and dug outs.  The battle parties advanced immediately and every 15 minutes after. The smoke barrage caused confusion amongst the forward men.  Some men at the front were hit by the creeping barrage of falling shells.

They quickly captured a German Machine gun and the small raiding party at the front moved on forward to the 2nd and 3rd objectives. Parties following behind occupied the trenches and cleared them.   

Fortunately, the Germans had previously moved their men back from the trenches and they were lightly manned.  Conflicting accounts state that they were caught unawares with no preparation for the sudden attack and that return shelling was minimal, so return fire was mostly single shots or machine gun.  However, this conflicts with later accounts that state that the Germans did fire some light shells into their own positions where the Canadians were now swarming.

Running alongside Sergeant Bossunbury, John was pushing forward at the front of the line bravely running into the smoke filled battleground with two of his best friends by his side. Not just into the smoke but into the shells falling from the heavy guns of the artillery of the allied Army guns firing from far behind them.  At dusk the red followed by green flare was fired to stop the Allied shelling.  They had captured the three objectives faster than they expected. 

The Artillery, following the battle plan failed to react and continued shelling.

John and a handful of raiders were at the end of the captured trenches and had heard the return signal.  They were preparing to make their way back to the start point and had been chatting to other men in the company.  Although the boys were still cautious and alert, the smoke was clearing, dusk was approaching and all the prisoners had been removed.  All the other men of the battalion had gathered near the 1st objective to make their way back to their own trenches.  Suddenly a round of shells burst in the captured trenches. 

John and four other men disappeared under the explosion.  They were obliterated and probably buried under tons of mud.  Search parties tried to locate the men that night but time was against them. The next morning, again, the mopping up parties tried to locate injured men or the dead.  They could not find either John or the two boys he had been standing with. An enquiry concluded that the men had most likely been killed.

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Five men were buried at Duisans Cemetery.  John and his two friends, as they were never found, are commemorated at the Vimy Memorial in Arras.

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As a man of extraordinary courage who volunteered for the danger of the trenches and prospect of death, leaving behind his farm and family, he was well aware of the risk and danger.  He had accepted his fate and knew he would never return. John had spent over a year at the front, earned his wound stripe and watched thousands die in the most horrific conditions. But he was a courageous and fearless fighter and one of Devons' finest.

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The family couldn’t accept his loss and waited for him for months to come home following the receipt of the letter informing him he was KIA. Their loss and grief was unabated.  They scanned the papers for faces of men who had lost their memory, to no avail. 

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In 2018, I went to the spot where John and his two friends were killed. With some professional assistance, I found the position of the last objective and exactly where they had stood in their last moments. It was in a vast, peaceful, flat field just outside Feuchy, where Barley whispered and swayed gently and poppies lined the edges of the field.  Somewhere, still, on this piece of unremarkable field, lie the bodies of John and his two friends.

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My father was named after John by my grandfather, who was John's baby brother.  Alfie was also sent to the front with the Salcombe RGA HAG, a driver with a 60lb heavy gun.  The story of the two boys and their war is within my book The Spirit of the Salcombe Boys.