Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Frederick Herbert Joseph SWANN (Service Number 3926A) was born on 3rd March 1897 at Levuka, Fiji. He began working as an electrical junior in the Tramways Branch of the NSW Railways at Sydney on 17th March 1913 and was still in this role when he was granted leave to join the AIF on 26th August 1915. He enlisted at Warwick Farm a couple of weeks later, claiming continuing service in the Army Engineers, and giving his father Frederick, then living in Fiji, as his next of kin.

He was allotted to the 9th Reinforcements to the 17th Battalion. He embarked HMAT ‘Runic’ at Sydney on 20th January 1916 and arrived at Alexandria, Egypt, on 26th February. By 27th March he had proceeded from that port city to join the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front in France, passing through Marseilles on 3rd April. He was taken on strength of the 2nd Australian Division at Etaples on 4th April, and the 20th Battalion, with the suffix ‘A’ added to his service number, on 16th May 1916.

Swann was reported missing in action on 5th August 1916. A Court of Enquiry held more than a year later on 29th September 1917 determined that he had in fact been killed in action on the date that he went missing.

Private A.J. Tout submitted substantial testimony to the enquiry by letter.

‘In reply I might mention that Cpl. McDonald who supplied me with the definitive information regarding the demise of the above-mentioned Private, has also been killed in action. However I am able myself to supply the information for which you have been pleased to write.  Pte Swann being killed whilst in progress of capturing and consolidating an enemy’s trench, and his body being so far removed from the burial districts (which I might mention are many miles behind the lines) he was buried by his comrades immediately on the spot – buried whilst the heaviest shell fire was in progress. As our Battalion was relieved almost immediately and we have never been back in that district since, it would be impossible for anyone to ever direct you to the place. Furthermore, the iron hand of War would be certain to have destroyed the land in which he was buried, as no spot in the trench lines escapes shell fire. It would be impossible, not only to secure a photo of the place at which he was buried, but I could say unhesitatingly, it would be impossible to find the actual place, even if the former were possible. This is a regrettable thing, but it is not possible to be otherwise. War would not be the instrument of destruction it is if it were otherwise.

I write so positively in this way because I would like to think that the deceased’s relatives and friends would not be attempting to continue further an impossible quest.

It is better that the body was buried that way than that it should have lain open to the storm of shell that poured over Pozières at that time. Would it be any comfort to the deceased’s friends to know that he was not left as others have been to lie unprotected in the open between the enemy’s and friend’s trenches to be buried a week perhaps afterwards when the British had advanced and captured those lines, by an unknown burial party, and his grave marked; “To an unknown soldier’s memory”. Let his friends know he was buried by men of his own company, and that immediately; and beyond that no more could have been done by men who had passed through the severest of fighting, and who were still enduring the heaviest artillery fire, who had toiled night and day for many days. And the principal person in that humane act has himself gone the long road since.’

Swann has no known grave and he is remembered on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, France.

- based on the Australian War Memorial Honour Roll and notes for the Great Sydney Central Station Honour Board.