Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Lyle Bruce McPherson HONE was born in Brighton in Victoria on 26th July, 1913

His parents were Thomas Colin HONE & Margaret Pearl JOHNSON who married in Victoria in 1910

He married Olive Maude DUELL in Victoria in 1937

Lyle first served in the Permanent RAAF (Citizens) SN (205414) where he enlisted on 15th May, 1930 as a Cadet II and was discharged on 1st July 1930

On 12th July, 1941 he enlisted in the Army (SN VX59406) & was discharged as medically unfit on 30th October, 1942 - his last rank was a Sapper in the Engineers Training Battalion (ME)  Royal Australian Engineers

He died in the Alfred Hospital in Prahan of illness on 13th June 1946 and is buried in the New Cheltenham Cemetery

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His brother Wallace McPherson HONE served during WW2 in the RAAF (SN 129456) and was discharged on 14th August, 1945

The Sapper, the Sign Writer, and the Silent Casualty: The Life of Bruce Hone

A pen scratches against a letter in a quiet room in Monbulk . Bruce Lyle Hone is twenty years old, and he is writing to the Adjutant of No. 1 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. It is 1931. Bruce owes the service twelve shillings and six pence for a pair of winter breeches he cannot afford to pay . He tells the officer he has been away for six months, wandering through New South Wales looking for any kind of work. He says he is out of work and sees no prospects in the near future .

This is the human reality of a young man born in Brighton in 1911, a sign writing painter by trade who first tried to wear a uniform during the height of the Great Depression . He had enlisted in the Citizen Air Force at Laverton in March 1930. His service was short. By July 1931, he was discharged. The record lists his conduct as "Unsatisfactory," a bureaucratic label for a man who failed to attend parades because he was walking the roads of another state in search of a wage

Nine years later, the quiet struggle of the Depression was replaced by the roar of the Glenferrie Oval. It is Saturday, 27 April 1940. Bruce Hone is now twenty-eight years old, six feet tall, and thirteen stone. He has traded the sign writer’s brush for a builder’s mallet in Olinda. On this afternoon, he is making his debut for the Hawthorn Football Club in Round 1 of the VFL season.

The ground is slick with mud, a heavy afternoon that demands endurance. Bruce is wearing number 38, playing as a half-forward and follower. He is part of a historic win. Hawthorn kicks 25.11 (161) to North Melbourne’s 13.11 (89), a score that stands as a club record for decades. Bruce plays five senior games that season and kicks three goals. He is an elite athlete at his physical peak, one of the men whose names are now etched on the Hawthorn Honour Board.

Bruce Hone is remembered today as one of the "Hawthorn Ten", the senior players who did not return from the Second World War.

 
Jack Drake: Army, KIA

Alf Giblett: Army, DOW

Bruce Hone: Army, Illness

Alex Nash: RAAF, KIA

 Richard Pirrie: Navy, KIA

 Jack Price: Army, KIA

 Len Thomas: Army, KIA

 Max Wheeler: Army, KIA

 Leo "Gus" Young: Army, KIA

 Harold Zucker: Army, KIA

On 12 July 1941, Bruce walked into the enlistment centre at Royal Park and joined the Australian Imperial Force. He was Sapper Hone now, VX59406, a technician in the Royal Australian Engineers. His experience as a builder made him a natural fit for the 2/12th Field Company . By December, he was disembarking in the Middle East.

The work of a sapper in the desert was technical and exhausting, building infrastructure, assembly of Bailey bridges, and handling explosives in temperatures that swung from blistering heat to freezing nights. It was here that a different kind of war began for Bruce. A sharp thirst that water cannot quench started in the heat of Syria. He was losing weight rapidly.

The record is silent on a single traumatic accident, though his family later spoke of one. On 22 May 1942, Bruce was evacuated to a hospital in the Middle East. The diagnosis was Diabetes Mellitus. In the 1940s, this was a metabolic collapse that required rigid dietary control and insulin storage, things that were impossible to maintain in a combat zone. Bruce was the silent casualty, a man whose body failed him before the enemy could.

On 3 July 1942, Bruce was carried aboard the Hospital Ship Maunganui at Suez. The voyage across the Indian Ocean was a period of forced inactivity for the man who had once sprinted across the MCG . He arrived in Melbourne on 4 August and was discharged as medically unfit on 30 October 1942 .

He returned to his wife, Olive, at their home in Glen Iris. He returned to his trade as a builder, but the disease he contracted in the desert did not relent. Bruce Hone died at the Alfred Hospital on 13 June 1946. He was 32 years old.

For fifty years, his story remained in the archives. His medals, the Defence Medal, the War Medal 1939/45, and the Australia Service Medal, sat unclaimed. In 1988, his niece, Jennifer Hone, began a quest to retrieve them. She corrected the army when they sent the wrong records. She reminded the bureaucracy that her uncle was over six feet tall and an engineer.

In 1994, the medals were finally issued. Jennifer became the steward of a memory that links a sign writer’s struggle for work, a footballer’s record win, and a sapper’s quiet death. Bruce is buried at the New Cheltenham Cemetery in Victoria. His headstone is a quiet marker of a life interrupted by the service he gave to his country.

Lest we forget

Rod Hutchings

Director, Virtual War Memorial Australia

Source Crediting:

Source: NAA: B883, VX59406; NAA: A9301, 205414; Hawthorn Football Club History; VWM Australia.