Lance Corporal John J Ryan in the Great War

Royal Newfoundland Regiment

Lance Corporal John Joseph Ryan. Hero of Egypt, Gallipoli, France and Flanders. Fought at Flers, Gueudecourt, Ypres, Beaumont Hamel and Ginchy. One of the first to join up on 1 October 1914, his regimental number 38. Enlisted when 17 years of age, and honorably discharged in 1919, having been wounded four times.

Lance Corporal John Ryan a marked literary talent – he had several contributions published in The Evening Telegram, St John’s, Newfoundland. Ryan’s article below on The Battle of the Somme published on 30 June 1919.

The Battle of the Somme

30 June 1916

A farewell concert given at Brigade Headquarters, and on the last night of June, when the sun had hidden its face from the horrors of the battle front, the Newfoundland Regiment, nine hundred strong, swung around the zig-zag roads from Louvencourt to the line.

Mailly-Mallet

The French villagers watched us go. Some cried but others cheered and wished us the luck that France was hoping for. Never before did the battalion look finer; splendid officers and stalwart men fully equipped and cleared for action. Marching through the intervening villages, we reached the suburbs of Mailly at dark.

In this hamlet the boys had many a good night’s rest, but it was now in the melting pot of German destruction. A great shell screamed overhead as we tramped out across the fields so as to give the former communicating lines a wide berth. The Hun batteries pouring showers of shrapnel on the main road, and our own “big ‘uns” sent over an occasional leviathan to clear the atmosphere.

Tipperary Avenue

On reaching the communication trench (Tipperary Avenue) we had to halt for quite a long while, as other regiments found their way in had blocked the entrance and it was impossible to get through for some time. This waiting in such a dangerous position very trying to the nerves. At any moment the enemy likely to start a bombardment and cause serious casualties, as shells bursting none too far away.

1 July 1916

St. John’s Road

Somewhere about midnight before we settled down to our jumping-off place in St. John’s Road. The night cold, damp and extremely uncomfortable. The heavy artillery steadily shelled the communications of the enemy, but nevertheless an ominous silence hung over the men of the Newfoundland Regiment.

No projectiles of any description touched St. John’s Road during the night, yet we longed for the beat of the morning. A plentiful supply of water was brought in, and we took an occasional drink with bread and canned meat. Few of us were inclined to sleep. It was the last night on earth for hundreds.

Day break

With the break of the day small guns joined in the scrap and dropped some shells on the Huns’ first system. Restless and impatient we waited for the hour to strike.

At seven o’clock our artillery commenced to blow up the whole German front. At eight the fire increased to a thunderous crashing of steel and explosives and the ground shook with the terrific cannonading.

Hawthorne Crater

For sixty minutes this avalanche of death kept up its strength. At nine o’clock the big mine went skywards, taking with it a village and many yards of Hun trench.

The Royal Fusiliers, who formed part of the attacking force on the left, moved forward with machine guns to occupy the crater, but were held up by a murderous fire from the enemy, and the Welsh Borderers, Iniskilling and Lancashire Fusiliers, with their supporting battalions, were practically annihilated by the deadly fire of the enemy. An officer rushed back into our traverse, his head and face mud and blood. He told us the attack a failure, the regiments wiped out, but the orders came down the line “Newfoundlanders Advance.”

Newfoundlanders Advance

We scrambled out and kept together as best we could. My eyes were fixed on the black burnt hillside where lay the German lines unconquered. I hardly noticed myself going over the ridge and crossing three trenches. Bullets whizzing past and cracking round everywhere. I glanced towards the left. The sections going on in splendid formation. I was so excited that I didn’t realize a wall of uncut wire barring our path.

I can remember the wire-cutters working like niggers to get through, but one died and hung on the wire. The others peppered with bullets, and the sections came piling in, but we had no means of advancing. The “typewriters” were too quick. The men dropped like wheat to the scythe. The German artillery now in the fray.

Colonel Arthur Lovell Hadow

I went through the firing line and met the Colonel. He told me to hang round in case of a counter stroke. Then the Germans gave us a taste of the gunfire we had been giving them for a week. Traverses went up under the smash of high explosives, and men who tried to get back with their wounds, never crossed that line of death. Life has never seemed so clear to me as It did at that hour, but there was no getting away from it.

Lt Charles Sydney Frost

When the fire had decreased, some’ of our boys managed to find the lines and get through to a first aid station. Others reached part of the way land dropped, crying out for stretcher bearers. Lieut Charles Sydney Frost credited with having gone out two or three times and carried in men on his back; whilst Private John Joseph ‘Jack’ Reardigan 72 worked like a trojan to get the badly wounded out of No Man’s Land. All day the Huns shelled our lines making the rescue work hard and dangerous. A fleet of ambulances rushed through the villages with the more serious cases, but many died before help could be given them.

Captain Bert Butler

Captain Bertram ‘Bert’ Butler assembled the remnants of the battalion and put us in a dugout near Constitutional Hill. This trench partly levelled by gunfire. QMS Charles Allen Cleary lay dead about half way through it, but nobody dared wait to remove his body as the shelling perpetual.

All night explosives bursting in the saps and the front line, but a scattered unwounded straggler returned from the shell holes. Burying parties brought in a few of the dead and placed them in the trenches for identification. This work continued for days. On the second and third, rain poured out of the heavens partly filling the lines and making’ our work of rescue a hardship.

The battle on the right was kept going strong, and when the sun again made its appearance the glittering I bayonets quite discernible a mile or two distant. With a pair of binoculars we could see the bombing fights between British and German, yet the artillery showed very little activity. Quite a large number of our dead still out in front when relieved by the 48th Division and sent back to Englebelmer.

This village evacuated by the inhabitants on the eve of the battle and now lay in ruins. Signs of a hasty departure of the inhabitants quite evident, but one old gray-haired peasant refused to leave, though ordered to do so many times by the French police.

Lt Owen Steele

It was here Lieut. Owen Steele received his fatal wounds on 8 July 1916. A large shell having burst in a barn a few yards from where he was standing outside the officers’ mess. Here also visited by Sir Almyer Hunter Weston, commanding the 8th Army Corps, who spoke about our day in the battle saying, “Newfoundlanders, you have done better than the best.”

Truly, we did what we could, but not a man expected such a glowing tribute after so terrible a failure. General Beauvoir De Lisle and staff are rumored to have said. “They went as if on parade until they could get no further” Though our English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh friends did their utmost, greatest praise reserved for the Newfoundlanders. It is England’s way of doing things. She suffered seventy-five per cent of all casualties, yet we are lauded to the skies by her newspapers, and the home regiments worked silently for the cause victorious.

Retirement

After being transferred to the huts in Manly Wood, the remnants of the battalion again sent into the line, reinforced by a small draft from Rouen. Remaining there a couple of days, we removed to Acheux. The work of reorganization quickly pushed, and in ten days the little body of Newfoundlanders marched back through Louvencourt cheered by the villagers. We were leaving Beaumont Hamel for ever.

Note Lt Owen William Steele survived the battle as his company kept out of the battle in case the Newfoundland Regiment should be decimated, as casualty figures reveal.

Casualty Figures

By 9:45 am it was all over for the Newfoundlanders. Lt. Col. Hadow informed Brigadier General Caley in person the attack had failed.

• Total Strength 30 June: 801
• Left Out of Battle 1 July (10%): 80
• Committed to Battle: 721
• Killed In Action or Died of Wounds: 14 Officers, 219 Other Ranks
• Wounded: 12 Officers, 374 Other Ranks
• Total KIA and wounded: 619
• Percentage Casualty Rate: 619/721 or 85%

Missing on July 1, 91 reported, probably many filtered in from No Mans Land over the next 48 hours.

Following the battle promoted Lance Corporal John Ryan on 12 July 1916. Beaumont-Hamel finally captured on 13 November 1916.

Epilogue

When on active service, Lance Corporal John Ryan spent some time recovering from injuries, received in action, at the Malta and Wandsworth Hospitals. He also had the unique experience of being on board the SS ERIK, when that ship sunk by a German submarine off St. Pierre, on 25 August 1918.

Royal Grocery

After the war ended, Lance Corporal John Ryan married. He and his wife Amelia (Westcott) had five sons. He started Royal Grocery, a retail/wholesale grocery business in downtown St. John’s. Royal Grocery (Moo Moos Ice Cream for 33 years until 2022) used to be near Holdsworth Court on George Street. The grocery supplied to Bell Island during the booming mining days. When the city appropriated the land from their original location in 1961, they moved to their Kings Road location.

Things were going so well in the mid-70s, Royal Grocery and the Ryan Family built a giant warehouse in the arse end of Mt. Pearl, before it was called Donovans Industrial Park. They used to have convenience stores throughout the city. When the owner declared bankruptcy, it was only because they were giving out too much credit to customers. Soon, other local businesses helped them back on their feet. Lance Corporal John Ryan continued to work there until the year before his death in 1983, aged 86. His son Wallace James Ryan passed away on 14 December 2018.

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