Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Thomas Charles Beenham was born to Edward and Hannah Beenham on March 1878 in Peckham; a large suburb of located towards the centre of London, England. As he grew up, Thomas attended London Council County School, also in Peckham, then spent the remainder of his years in the country working as a plasterer. It was also during his life in England that he met the woman who would become his wife; Lillie. Lillie and Thomas became married while there and had six children before moving to Australia. Existing information relating to the date the family moved to Australia is inconsistent with information Thomas wrote about his own age, although it is likely the migration occurred between 1910 and 1912. Upon arrival, they moved to 64 Fisher Street, Norwood, Adelaide. Thomas and Lillie went on to have one more child before Thomas was enlisted.

The enlistment process began for Beenham on the 31 May 1915 in Adelaide. It was then that he was assigned the title of Private, and given the regimental number 2112. This was due to the fact that he had no previous military experience or relevant training. When filling out the enlistment form, he described his appearance to include grey eyes, greying hair, and a fair complexion. This was recorded along with his height and weight, which were 1.64m and 70.76kg respectively. Beenham was put into the 27th Infantry Battalion, and was part of the 4th Reinforcement.

Beenham embarked from Keswick, South Australia on the 21 September 1915 aboard the HMAT A15 Star of England. From here, he travelled to Alexandria, Egypt to train with other troops, thanks to his minimal experience with fighting. This training period lasted for almost a year, and he didn’t see active service until 2 August 1916 when his battalion was transported to England.

Thomas obviously did not enjoy the idea of serving in the army, as it was about two months later, on the 30 October, when he was recorded as officially AWOL (Absent Without Leave). The reason for his escape is unknown, although upon perhaps hearing about the conditions warfare took place in during those times making an attempted escape seems perfectly reasonable (will be expanded on below). His hiding must have been quite successful as he was not discovered until 11 January 1917 in London, and when he was the penalty was quite severe. Beenham was arrested on the spot and court-martialled, and was later to plead guilty to his charges. The sentence given was 8 months in detention, however he was released 110 days early, putting the total number of days in the prison type establishment at 134. This early release did come with 220 days of docked pay however, which would not have been beneficial at all for him or his family back home.

Between the end of his detention sentence, in mid-1917, and 23 January 1918, Beenham had little recorded action, although there was mention of him ‘marching out to the 6th Training Battalion’ and ‘marching in from the 7th Training Battalion’ from the 7th to the 8th September 1917. It was, however, on the 23 January when his battalion’s reinforcements finally would see the face of the battlefield; they departed for France, one of the main arenas of the WW1 battles, via the Southampton port.

Thomas had not spent long on the front lines before he was admitted to a local French hospital with scabies on 5 February 1918. Scabies is a contagious skin condition caused by a microscopic mite that burrows into the skin and offers the side-effect of making that skin extremely irritated. Thanks to the unsanitary conditions of the trenches in WW1, developing scabies or other parasite-based infections were not uncommon at all. Thomas rejoined his battalion on 22 February that same year.

When looking at the date at which Thomas was transported to France, it is notable that it is quite close to the end of the war. This means there were few possible major battles him and his reinforcements could have participated in. One of which, occurring from the 21 March to the 18 July in 1918, was the German Spring Offensive, or Kaiserschlacht. This offensive was not a single attack, but rather a series of attacks along the Western Front fought by Germany, and the plan Germany had was to end WW1 with this offensive. There is recorded evidence that the 27th Infantry Battalion did fight in these battles, so it was likely that Thomas’ reinforcement saw action at some point.

The kind of conditions that Beenham would have had to withstand while on the Western Front in the trenches were appalling. As mentioned previously, the trenches were filled to the brim with the most revolting mixture of substances imaginable; there was an obvious abundance of human corpses everywhere; some buried, some left alone to rot. There were rats, which feasted upon the decaying flesh and have been described in diary entries of soldiers at the time as ‘healthier looking than any of [them] were’; some even described as growing to the size of cats. There were even some cases of overflowing latrines, meaning on occasions the soldiers would had to have walked through the human waste. This, coupled with the narrow size of the trench and the cold water constantly around their feet, would have made life in the trenches an absolute nightmare for Thomas and the many other soldiers there.

Other battles fought in include an attack at Morlancourt, the Battle of Hamel, and some of the multiple battles in the 100 Days Offensive. It was in the 100 Days Offensive that Beenham saw his demise; he was killed in action on 2 September 1918 at age 38, just two days before the end of many of the battles that took place during this final offensive. On the day of his death, it is mentioned in the unit diary that there was some ‘intense M.G. [machine gun] fire’ and ‘a battery of .77 mm guns on them’ as well as ‘continuous shell-fire’, so one of those would have been the cause of Thomas’ death.

Beenham was buried at the Peronne Communal Cemetery Extension, France, which is one of the many mass burial grounds for the victims of the war.

After Thomas’ death, Lillie suffered from both financial and medical difficulties. As she was a woman that did not work and had seven children to support, money was tight for the family. The address of the family changed quite a few times after the war, suggesting that Lillie did not own a home. There are multiple possible explanations as to why she moved around so much, the most likely being that she was not making rental payments.

Lillie was also quite persistent in writing letters to the officials requesting that the contents of Thomas’ kit bag were sent to her, and she ultimately succeeded in getting it. The contents included a YMCA wallet, 2 religious books, letters, a notebook, a book of views, a purse, a disc, some religious emblems, a signals book, some coins, a gold medallion, and a set of rosary beads. This last item is a point of interest as Beenham stated his religion as Church of England on his enlistment form, and the rosary is a significant item in the Catholic religion. This means it is possible that Beenham converted his religion while serving, although there are other valid explanations for this as well, including it being someone else’s.

Lillie passed away on the 26 August 1937.