Life
Presbyterian minister at Townsend St.; joined RAF in wartime; suffered accident, enduring painful hospitalisation; issued Poems of a Parachute Padre (1943); photo. port. of goodlooking young man; ‘laid aside by an unfortunate accident’; poems on war, graveyards (in peace time), and hospital; celebrates towns of co. Tyrone in archaic poetic diction (‘Thine is the ...’); well-made more modern quatrains on less nostalgic subjects (‘The Diver’).
Works
Poems of a Parachute Padre, by J. W. Johnston (Belfast: Quota Press 1943) [1st Edn. Nov. 1943; 2nd Edn. Dec. 1943], 73pp.