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John Lenehan from Australia, worked in the tunnelling corps, which dug under enemy defences as well as digging trenches for the front line troops. John’s unit dug much of the defences into the cliffs at Gallipoli, pictured right. He was brought to Birmingham, and then buried at Lodge Hill after he was injured in France in 1918.
He was buried on Armistice Day - November 11, 1918. The inscription on his headstone read: “A father’s only son who gave his life in the Great War.”
He was 29 when he died after failing to recover from a gunshot wound suffered during action on October 2. He was admitted to a hospital in Rouen, France, before making his way to Southern General Hospital.
Crater of the Caterpillar mine detonated as part of the Mines in the Battle of Messines (1917)
The Australian 1st tunneling corps were responsible for mines under 'Hill 60 - When the mines were detonated along with others laid under the Messines Ridge at 3:10 a.m. on 7 June 1917, 990,000 pounds (450,000 kg) of explosives went off under the German positions, demolishing a large part of Hill 60 and killing c. 10,000 German soldiers between Ypres and Ploegsteert.[30][d]
'Suddenly at dawn, as a signal for all of our guns to open fire, there rose out of the dark ridge of Messines and 'Whitesheet' and that ill-famed Hill 60, enormous volumes of scarlet flame [...] throwing up high towers of earth and smoke all lighted by the flame, spilling over into fountains of fierce colour, so that many of our soldiers waiting for the assault were thrown to the ground. The German troops were stunned, dazed and horror-stricken if they were not killed outright. Many of them lay dead in the great craters opened by the mines.'
How war graves looked at Lodge Hill Cemetery in the 1920s
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