Australian Light Horse Man recuperating in sunny Porthcawl

Description

It shows the Rest Home donkey cart carrying two wounded soldiers. The man on the left is 139 Private Joseph Henry McInnes of the 8th Australian Light Horse and the soldier on the right is unknown but, according to his cap badge, he was in the Norfolk Regiment.
Pte. McInnes enlisted in the army in 1914 and, eventually. was involved in the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 where he contracted typhoid.
He was evacuated and hospitalised first at Alexandria in Egypt and then was transferred to the UK and admitted to Whitchurch Hospital, Cardiff in November 1915.
The Rest was a St. John's Auxiliary Hospital and used as a convalescent centre by Whitchurch. In August 1916 he was discharged from hospital and sent to Weymouth where he joined the 1st ANZAC Entrenching Battalion, from there he was posted to France. He left the army in February 1919 and died on 11th April, 1982 at the ripe old age of 93. The photo was taken in James Street; the building on the left which is now Lloyd's Bank then housed White's Temperance Hotel and Lewis's Saddlers. Eastman's Butchers is now Guttridge's and the writing on the wall above displays J.E. Davies, Cloth Hall. Pte. McInnes's full service record can be seen in the Museum.