Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Thomas James Hann (Reg. #1951) enlisted in the AIF on the 31st January 1915 at Mitchell, QLD. He registered himself as being 25yrs and 2mths of age, was working as a ‘Labourer’, and gave his address as ‘Bungawally’, South Woodburn on the Richmond River, NSW. He was 5’ 7” tall, 11stone, 3lb (71kg), brown eyes, dark complexion with dark brown hair, was a C of E, and his next of kin was listed as Eliza Annie McPhee (mother). After the death of Thomas’ father John George Hann in 1893, his mother Eliza Annie (nee Robinson) had remarried in 1906 to Allan McPhee at Casino, hence the different surname.

Thomas James Hann was taken in at Enoggera and assigned to the 5th Reinforcements for the 15th Bn. Thomas was a great grandson of the Hann pioneers of Grafton, and embarked on 16th April 1915 from Brisbane aboard “HMAT Kyarra” (A55). After more training in Egypt, his unit joined the 15th Bn. already at Anzac Cove, but after the initial landings a period of stalemate had fallen across the Gallipoli peninsula. By early June, the 15th Bn. strength fell below 600 men, so it was withdrawn from Quinn’s Post to recuperate in a quiet sector known as ‘Rest Gully’. Over the next two months, mainly due to illness, the Bn.’s personnel were almost completely replaced. It received several drafts of reinforcements (including the 5th Reinforcements), amounting to over 500 men, including its transport element, and by early August it had reached a strength of 720 men.

However, throughout his whole overseas campaign it seems Thomas Hann suffered continually from ‘enteritis’, and on the 24th July 1915 he was evacuated from the Dardanelles to the “HS Somali” suffering from ‘dysentary’, which arrived at Malta on the 31st July. After a spell, he was embarked aboard the “HS Andania” for England on the 23rd August and was transferred to the Military Hospital Endell St. in London, where he spent the next 10 months recovering. He was then sent to Weymouth, which was the AIF Command Depot No.2, and accommodated those men not expected to be fit for duty within six months, therefore, most of the diggers repatriated as a result of wounds or sickness passed through Weymouth.

Meanwhile, following the evacuation from Gallipoli, and after a further period of training, in June 1916 the 15th Bn. had sailed for France aboard the transport “Transylvania.” After landing at Marseilles, the 15th Bn. moved to northern France via rail to Beilleul, moving into the line around Bois Grenier for a brief period on 15 June. Amidst the carnage of the Battle of the Somme which was launched in July, the following month the 15th Bn. was committed to fighting on the Western Front for the first time, entering the line around Pozières on 5 August, as the 4th Division relieved the shattered 2nd Division.

By the 18th July 1916 Thomas Hann had recovered his strength and was marched in to Etaples, France where he eventually rejoined the 15th Bn. on the 17th August 1916. By the time Thomas met up with his unit, casualties during the battalions first battle on the Western Front had been very high with 90 killed and 370 wounded. Following this, the 15th Bn. moved to Mouquet Farm, where they supported an attack by the 14th Bn. and carried out defensive duties. They remained there until early September, when they were withdrawn back to Warloy and then to Reingheist, via Doulens. Before this occurred, on 30 August, the 15th experienced a change in command, as Cannan, who had been promoted to brigadier-general, was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Terence McSharry. The remainder of the year was spent in the Ypres salient, around St Eloi and Boorlartbeek, before winter fell on the Western Front. It was the worst winter in Europe in 40 years, and the men suffered heavily from sickness and the cold as they rotated through the line, conducting defensive duties and labouring before moving to Gueudecourt, and then later Lagnicourt, in the new year.

As winter passed, in an effort to shorten their lines and move into prepared positions, the Germans fell back towards the Hindenburg Line. After the Allies advanced to follow up the withdrawal, the 15th Bn. fought its first major battle of 1917 in early April, around Bullecourt, where the 4th Brigade attacked as a complete formation for the first time since Gallipoli. But this was where Thomas’ war ended, as just a week prior to Bullecourt, Thomas Hann was taken prisoner at Dernancourt on the 5th April 1917, and upon capture was apparently suffering a wound to the chin.

At this time the German soldiers at the the front were suffering severely, so one can only imagine how the POWs were treated. Prisoners were temporarily housed in makeshift penal compounds where there were often upwards of 200 men to a room that could not properly accommodate 50. It was a frightful experience and the POWs suffered these conditions for days. They may have had a threadbare blanket, but no bedding and no place to sleep. The captured men were then marched to a station to entrain for Germany. Thomas’s trip into Germany would have followed a common transport route for POWs: to Brussels, through Liege, Aachen and Dusseldorf, before arriving at the Dülmen POW Camp. The journey took quite a while, the men crammed into cattle cars that bumped and shunted along. Every few hours the train would lurch into a station. At some stations they were able to leave the train and stretch their legs. At others they could only catch a glimpse of the town by pressing their faces to the ventilation grates.

During the journey the men may have received meagre rations of bread or barley water, or they might have attempted to barter parts of their uniform for food. Trading boots and braces could get a man half a loaf of bread. Arriving at the Dülmen camp, Thomas would have been processed as a prisoner of war. He lined up with the other men to be counted, and was asked if he was willing to work on farms or in factories. Prisoners were often ‘encouraged’ to volunteer through beatings and other ill treatment. He had to survive on camp rations and live in the clothes in which he was captured, probably lice-ridden despite the camp fumigation. He must have been desperately hungry as the supplied food was little more than starvation rations. Typically, each man would receive a mug of ersatz coffee made from burnt barley or acorns, and a thin slice of black bread, adulterated with sawdust. At lunch he might have soup of varying quality, but generally it was little more than the water in which guards had boiled their own meals, with odd pieces of vegetable floating around.

The official confirmation that Thomas was a prisoner of war was received by his mother on the 28th April 1917. Although his war was over and all he needed to do was survive, sadly Thomas James Hann died as a result of an ‘abscess on the brain’ on the 11th July 1918 at the Prisoner of War Camp at Dulmen, Westphalen, Germany. He was initially buried in the Dulmen Prisoner of War Cemetery, Westphalia [Plot L; Row 9; Grave 85]. However, with a view to concentrating all British graves in German Communal burial grounds his body was exhumed on the 11th July 1918 and placed in the Cologne South Cemetery, Rhine Province [Plot 10; Row B; Grave-1]. By the 15th July 1921 Thomas James Hann had posthumously received the 1914/15 Star (#14918), the British War Medal (#10649) and the Victory Medal (#10603), and is remembered by a memorial plaque grave at Cologne South Cemetery.