60847: Letter sent home by James Ryan

Letter home dated 18th September 1917

James Ryan was 6ft tall and looked older which was why he was accepted as a volunteer at just 16 years of age. He joined the Royal Field Artillery as a Gunner (service no. 1385) and was mobilised on the 4th August 1914 from Southampton to Alexandria. He travelled to Cairo, Ismailia, Kantarah, Albania, Port Said and into Turkey, fighting in Gallipoli and the Dardanelles with the '1st/1st Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 1/4th East Lancs. Battery, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force' (i.e. 213th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 42nd Division). Then eventually back to Alexandria, Cairo, Alexandria, Dardenelles, Cairo, Suez, Moses Well to Cairo. During this period he was hospitalised several times with slight knee injury from splinters from a shell burst, several severe attacks of dysentery and was seriously ill with jaundice which keep him in hospital for several weeks. He sailed to Cyprus to a Hospital in Limassol. He was sent home to England at some point to his parents and young sister Edna, my mother- who will be 96 years old this July and remembers and still grieves for her brother ˜jim-jim'. A gap here in information, but he returned to action and fought in France and Belgium. He states in the attached letter that there isn't a bullet with his name on, which proved correct when Jim was killed by Mustard Gas on 30th September 1917 at the 3rd battle of Passchendale on the Menin Road (serving with 'B' Battery, 210th Brigade Royal Field Artillery, 42nd Division, as Acting Bombadier, no. 705469), and taken to the Mendingham dressing station. He is buried at the Mendingham cemetery where his headstone shows his age as 22yrs old which is incorrect as he had lied about his age when he volunteered.