Jim Robson was born in September 1895 at Cramlington, Northumberland, England.

His parents both died in a typhoid epidemic when he was aged eight. The five children were then split up among relatives and friends. Jim was taken in by an aunt at Dudley, Northumberland and raised with much discipline but little love.

Jim started work underground at Dudley Colliery aged 11, on small jobs that would not occupy an adult, until he attained the legal working age when he became a wheeler, handling the skips or trolleys loaded with coal bound for the surface. He had little education but keenly pursued what learning he could get.

By age eighteen he was becoming known in the district as a lay preacher in the primitive Methodists' Chapels in Dudley and Cramlington.

Following the declaration of war on Germany in August 1914, Jim enlisted, against the wishes of his domineering aunt, with the Northumberland Fusiliers, (the old "Fifth of Foot"), in the 9th (Service) Battalion, a unit of Kitchener's 2nd New Army.

The 9th NF departed Central Station, Newcastle on the evening of 6 September 1914 bound for Bovington Camp, Wool, Dorset, for initial training. No facilities existed at their destination. For several nights they slept under the stars without blankets. In October the 9th received their first weapons: 1890's vintage Lee Enfields and Lee Metfords. Uniforms and modern equipment were not issued until early 1915.

Training continued at Hursley, near Winchester until 15 July 1915 when the 9th embarked at Folkestone and sailed for France.

Jim most likely served in the line first at St Eloi and Hill 60 in the Ypres Salient in July and August 1915.

He was serving with D Company of the 9th near Vierstraat in the Ypres Salient on 6 September 1915 when his company commander Captain Basil Knott was mortally wounded, dying the next day.

Captain Knott's parents, Sir James and Lady Knott of Close House, Wylamon-on-Tyne, Northumberland, subsequently established a memorial trust to benefit all of those who served under each of their three sons during the Great War. The Knott's had three sons. Basil, killed at Ypres with the 9th. James was killed on 1 July 1916 at the Somme. (James wrote in June 1916 to his parents: "This letter is not intended as a message from the grave - I know I will be with you when you are reading this. I hope and desire above all things that you will not unduly grieve."). Their third son, Thomas, was listed missing-in-action at Gallipoli in 1915 while with the New Zealand Expeditionary Corps. (Intriguingly, Thomas reappeared in England in the mid 1920s, but was apparently rejected by his parents). The tower of St George's Memorial Church at Ypres was also funded by the Knotts in memory of their sons.

During the War, Jim was wounded seriously at least three times, once by bayonet and twice due to shrapnel. After being wounded, possibly at "the Bluff" near Ypres, he spent several months of early 1916 in an Irish hospital near Dublin. He later experienced several gas attacks and was buried by shell bursts but escaped further serious injury.

In 1916 he fought at the Somme, either with the 10th or 21st Battalions NF.

In late 1916 Jim, now with the 11th Battalion NF, 23rd Division, returned to the Ypres Salient. At this time he was a regular visitor to Talbot House, "Toc H" - at first for the Chapel services, but later for the company alone.

On 29 July 1917 Jim attended the burial of James Malone, (18th Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers), his friend and workmate from Dudley Colliery who had been killed in action north of Poperinghe in the Ypres Salient. Jim by chance was nearby and heard of his friend's death. Later he wrote to James Malone's parents to tell them their son had received a good burial. Amongst the grief at their loss, the Malone's were greatly comforted that their son and brother had a known grave and was not among the vast numbers of the missing. The oldest remaining child, Isabella, wrote back to Jim Robson to thank him. The two continued to correspond. Bella had not met Jim but had seen him preaching at Chapel in Dudley. He had never met her. Eventually, in a letter, Jim asked Bella to marry him and she accepted.

On 31 July 1917 the Third Battle of Ypres, (Passchendaele), began. The battle continued until November 1917 with over 70,000 British and Empire soldiers killed and 170,000 wounded. The 11th NF was initially held in reserve but in September was committed along side the ANZAC Corps in the Battle of the Menin Road.

In October 1917 as the advance moved closer to Passchendaele village itself, Jim was awarded the Military Medal for "conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty" during an engagement at Joist Farm near Polygon Wood. (Three DCMs, six MCs and twenty-nine MMs were awarded as a result of the same action).

Jim's MM award is listed in the London Gazette here

Another Northumberland Fusilier described the Passchendaele battlefield at this time. "Will people who never saw this place ever realise the horrors? Mile after mile was churned by shells for months; the ground was sodden and hideous. Hardly a square yard was but a shell hole, filling rapidly with water. Roads were obliterated; traffic was on duckboards laboriously kept repaired. Did a man get off the track, he was immersed in icy water, evil smelling and filthy. Hooves of mules stuck out of the slime, the bodies invisible. The enemy had the tracks ranged to a nicety; shells were frequent, and at night planes bombed their overhead way along them. Miracles of endurance were performed daily; guns were hauled forward somehow, rations were got up, runners struggled heroically with their important messages, and the ever working stretcher-bearers carried out the endless stream of wounded."

Immediately after the conclusion of Passchendaele, Jim transferred to Italy with the 23rd Division to reinforce the Italians against Austria after the disaster at Caporetto.

Despite being involved in several engagements in early in 1918, Jim remembered his time in Italy fondly, a relief after the Western Front.

His final action in the War was at the Vittorio Veneto between 27 October and 4 November 1918. During this battle the 11th Northumberland Fusiliers played a decisive roll. After the first day the 11th had been severely reduced. With all senior officers killed or wounded and led by a Lieutenant, the 11th had crossed the fast flowing River Piave and engaged in hand-to-hand bayonet fighting to secure the river crossing. Two days later, reorganised as two companies the 11th attacked again, crossing the Monticano River and, again after fierce resistance, cleared the enemy from the whole of the Brigade front. The Austrians surrendered on 4 November 1918.

Having served for all but a few weeks of the War he was demobilised in early 1919 returning to Dudley, and the colliery. Jim and Bella were married two weeks after he returned, and were always grateful that their love of his friend and her brother, James Malone, had brought them together. Later they moved to Wideopen, not far from Dudley.

In the late 1920's Jim and Bella immigrated with a band of friends to Australia with their three children. Australia was selected over Canada based on the contact he had with the ANZACs in Flanders and the vivid stories they told. The family's passage was paid by the Knott Memorial Trust, founded by the parents of Captain Basil Knott.

With their friends from Dudley and Wideopen, Jim and Bella established a small Geordie community in a coalmining district near Lithgow, in the mountains west of Sydney. The Knott Trust also paid some of the costs of resettling the family in their new country.

Jim became active in labour affairs and befriended local politician, Ben Chifley.

Chifley became Prime Minister of Australia in 1945. Soon after, Jim who had seen so much of war, sat with his friend, (who had never known war), and talked through the night as Chifley sought to reconcile himself to the responsibility of having committed many young Australian's to their deaths after giving the order for the Australian amphibious assaults on Japanese held Borneo in mid-1945.

During the 1950's and 1960's Jim Robson also served as a Member of Parliament.

He returned to Northumberland in the early 1960s and marched with his comrades from Dudley on May Day. The former coal skip wheeler's representative on the Dudley Lodge also sat down to dinner with the then head of the National Coal Board.

When he died in December 1975 he was given an ecumenical service officiated over by Protestant and Catholic clergy - rare at that time, but even stranger given his views on religion, (he became an atheist in Flanders in 1917). He wished, however, to ensure he was buried next to Bella who had converted to Catholicism soon after their marriage. He thus became a Catholic in the last week of his life, and was received by that church warmly over his last days.

More than 1000 people attended his funeral, spilling into the surrounding streets.

At the service it was said that he had been "a hero on the battlefield and throughout his life stood for freedom and the right of a man to express himself."

A newspaper obituary said: "He was born into hardship with little of life's luxuries in a time of few tolerances and came to a brutal awakening and maturity imposed by war." His youth thus marked him so that he became "a political zealot, ruthlessly determined to achieve his objectives." Yet, paradoxically, he was at the same time open and warm at a personal level "quick to make friends even among his opponents, who never doubted his honesty of purpose". He was fiercely proud of being English, yet loved Australia, and was proud "that he had contributed all that one Englishman could give to a new country".

Jim Robson rarely spoke of his wartime experiences. The Great War destroyed his faith in God, shaped his values and politics, led him through the death of his friend James Malone to his wife Bella, and, via the Knott Foundation and his contact with the ANZACs, delivered him to a new country with opportunities undreamt of by the boy orphan in Dudley.

When asked about the War, however, his usual reply with little further discussion was: "Oh, I just spent most of the time up to my neck in shit and mud".

This excellent article was compiled by Peter Robson, Jim's grandson, from family recollections; research conducted by Lithgow City Library; research conducted by Chris Baker including the war diaries of the 9th, 10th, 11th and 21st Battalions, Northumberland Fusiliers; and from the "Historical Records of the Ninth (Service) Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers" Captain H Cooke, Newcastle 1927.

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