2015: Trans Tasman Anzac Day Blog Challenge

Portrait of Private Edward Hinde of Gilston, Queensland, pictured in France, circa 1916 [picture] / Photographer unknown.  Picture courtesy of Gold Coast Libraries Picture Gold Coast collection.  This image is free of copyright restrictions. Permission is needed to use this image for commercial purposes.

It's on again !  Kintalk's Trans Tasman Anzac Day Blog Challenge.  This year I have chosen to focus on the Hinde branch of my husband's family.  My husband prompted this blog by saying he remembered a photo of a digger on the wall of his grandmother's house when he was growing up. He remembered the man's name was Thomas.  I knew it couldn't be Thomas Daw - he was too young for WWI .  Dorothy, my husband's grandmother, was a Hinde before she married. When I searched the NAA records  for Hindes serving in WWI, I found an Edward and a Thomas.  Edward and Thomas would have been Dorothy's first cousins once removed or to put it another way, Edward and Thomas would have been Dorothy's father's first cousins. 

Let's step back a bit.  Dorothy's grandfather was George Hinde.  George Hinde and Michael James Hinde were brothers and they came to Australia from Olney in Buckinghamshire. You can learn a lot from their obituaries and other articles which I discovered through Trove. 

OBITUARY. (1937, July 30). South Coast Bulletin (Southport, Qld. : 1929 - 1949), p. 10. Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article133670713 

OBITUARY. (1933, May 26). South Coast Bulletin (Southport, Qld. : 1929 - 1949), p. 1. Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13377364

There is a photo of the Hinde brothers and their wives on the occasion of their golden wedding anniversaires together with another couple from the area -  Queenslander in 1932 .....

AGE AND ACTIVITY. (1932, April 21). The Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld. : 1866 - 1939), p. 23. Retrieved April 26, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article23148299

You can also read a really interesting blog post about the Hinde family and their connection to the cultivating of macadamia tress here.

So, Michael James Hinde and Alice (nee Batten) had 8 children altogether that I can discover from the index to Registery of Qld Births Deaths and Marriages. They were:

1. Adelaide born 1882 (married 1903 to Richard Cummings)
2. Emma born 1883 (married 1906 to Henry Stephens)
3. Alice born 1885 - died when she was 19 (circa 1905)
4. Edward born 1887
5. Joseph born 1889 (married Margaret Evangeline 1910)
6. James born 1891- died when he was 5 (circa 1896)
7. Thomas born 1892
8. Jessie born 1895 (married Henry William Frederick Zimmerman 1918)

On Saturday 15 January 1916 Edward Hinde aged 28, a labourer from Gilston,  enlisted in Brisbane.  He named his father as next of kin.  He was measured at 5 foot 7 inches.  What inspired him to sign up I wonder?  Perhaps it was this  speech from the Prime Minister at Melbourne Town Hall the previous Thursday.  Did he hear it broadcast on a radio in Gilston I wonder or just read about it in the paper?

The Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 - 1933), p. 7. Retrieved April 26, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page1588618

On the same page the following is reported:

'

On page 13 of Citizen to Soldier by J.N.I. Dawes and L.L. Robson, it is reported that a questionnaire was sent to every man in Australia aged between eighteen and sixty in 1915 asking questions such as When will you enlist?  and If you won't, then why not?  

RECRUITING STATISTICS. (1916, January 13). The Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 - 1933), p. 8. Retrieved April 26, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article20060467

Monday's paper reported that on the day Edward enlisted, 93 volunteers presented themselves at the Adelaide Street Depot.  It must have been a busy day because on the third page of Edward's attestation paper someone wrote his name as Harold!  This photo from The Queenslander on 26 February 1916 gives us some idea of what it was like at the office 

The recruiting depot at Toowoomba with Captain Hall, the recruiting officer, and staff.

Just over 2 weeks later on Wednesday 2 February he was at the 11th Depot Battalion, presumably training.  This is what the camp looked like at the time.  

Enoggera, QLD. 1916. Men sitting in a horse and cart by the side of the road watch as trainees at the army training camp in Brisbane, mounted on horses, parade through the artillery camp past the tent lines. Recruits were trained here before embarking on active service overseas. (Donor R. Sky) Kitchener Studio Photography courtesy of the Australian War Memorial.

Edward's younger brother Thomas or Tom must have heard what army life was like from his older brother and been similarly inspired.  With his other brother and sisters married, he was probably feeling a bit lonely.  On Monday 13 March he also enlisted in Brisbane.  At 5 foot 9 and 1/2 inches he was a bit taller than his older brother. He joined the 11th Depot Battalion on Thursday 20 April and on 4th July joined the 5th Reinforcements of the 52nd Battalion. You can see a picture of him (the one my husband remembered from his Gran's home) here on Discovering Anzacs. Gold Coast Libraries also have a picture of him at Gilston School in 1903.  He is the last boy on the right in the back row here.  

This is his signature on the attestation paper

Edward was at first with the 13th Reinforcements of the 26th Infantry but on 18th May was transferred to the 20th Reinforcements of the 9th Battalion.   On 12 July Tom was transferred to th 20th Reinforcements of the 9th Battalion.  I wonder if it was by luck or design that the two brothers ended up in the same Battalion.  At any rate, they both embarked together for England on the Clan MacGillivray on Thursday 7 September 1916.

We can imagine their departure looked something like this...

BRISBANE, QLD. C. 1915. TROOP TRANSPORT CLAN MACGILLIVRAY (A46) AT PINKENBA WHARF WITH SOLDIERS ON BOARD AND RELATIVES ON THE WHARF BIDDING THEM FAREWELL

I wonder if their sisters or parents managed to get up to see them off at the wharf or if they were too busy managing farms and families.  Maybe their younger sister Jessie aged about 21 was able to do so.

I'm sorry to say that the two brothers were not very well after their arrival in Plymouth on 2 November 1916.  They were in the 3rd Training Battalion at Durrington Camp.  Edward ended up in Brimstone Bottom hospital on 28 November with the mumps.  A preliminary scouring of the internet reveals that Brimstone Bottom was part of Tidworth, which according to  T.S. Crawford's Wiltshire and the Great War, became the AIF's headquarters in Britain in mid 1916.  Tom followed shortly after on 1 December with Rheumatism and was then transferred to the Fargo Hospital on 20 December where he stayed until 28 January. He was back in hospital by the 31 January though and transferred to Sutton Veny by 11 February with Myalgia.  On 22 February Edward was  admitted to the Fargo Hospital with P.U.O. which apparently means Pyrexia of Unknown Origin - a fever of some sort.  Not a great start to their adventure.  

Let's have a closer look at the area....

This site tells you where all the hospitals were at the time.  So Durrington camp would have been just to the right of Larkhill where Fargo Hospital was located.  I wonder if the boys ever got to see Stonehenge?

At any rate, Edward embarked for France on 10 April 1917 and once he was recovered Tom embarked for France on 19 June.  They were serving in the 9th Battalion.  The Australian War Memorial's site tells us that .. In 1917 the battalion moved back to Belgium for the advance to the Hindenburg Line, and in March and April 1918 helped stop the German spring offensive.

Tom was gassed in Belgium on 1st November 1917.  He spent quite a bit of time recovering in hospital - first at the Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley in Hampshire, then he was moved to the 3rd A.H. at Dartford on 17 December.

Dartford, Kent, England. 1917. Group portrait of members of the massage staff at No. 3 Australian Auxiliary Hospital. Back row, left to right: Miss Lowe, Masseuse; unidentified; Miss Morton, Masseuse; Sergeant Dewar; Miss McRae, Masseuse; Staff Sergeant (S Sgt) Quinn; Miss Rooke, Masseuse; Private Mitchell. Second row: S Sgt Beattie; Miss Yates, Masseuse; S Sgt Mackie; Miss Kircaldy, Masseuse; Captain Hugh Murray, Medical Officer in Charge; Mrs unidentified, known as "Mrs Anzac"; S Sgt F. Staweski; Miss Bulmer, Masseuse. Front row: Private (Pte) Burnie; Pte Shaw; Pte Lucas. (Donor Beattie)

Maybe some of these staff looked after him while he was there.

He was then moved to the Delhi Hospital at Hurdcott  on 31 December until 2 April 1918 when he proceeded back to France.  

Hurdcott, Wiltshire, England. 18 December 1918. AIF Group Hospital ward at the 3rd Training Brigade. Group Hospital in charge of Captain S. McLennan, Australian Army Medical Corps, and staff of one Resident Medical Officer and four Australian Army Nursing sisters. Shown: Sister Howsen, Australian Nursing Service (right). Troops not seriously ill are sent to this hospital for treatment and are kept within the AIF area. 

At the end of March Edward had been admitted to hospital in Belgium with conjunctivitis and a nebromian cyst and discharged 20 April.  Not for long though as he received a gun shot wound in his thigh on 23 April and was invalided to England.

On 9 May Tom was gassed again and transferred to the 64th Casualty Clearing Station (CCS).  He was then transferred to the 1st and then the 10th Convalescent Depots at Boulogne and then the Battalion Depot at Le Havre.  This site gives a good diagram of how the soldiers moved through the medical system from field to hospital and a list of military hospitals on the Western Front.

On 6 July Tom rejoined his battalion and was finally wounded with a gun shot to the head on 18 September.  He died at 10:35pm on 21 September 1918 and was buried at Terlincthun Cemetery Boulogne Base Grave No. 21a 5 Plot.  He was 26 years old.  

Thomas' name is on Panel 56 in the Commemorative Hall of the Australian War Memorial. 
If you are in Canberra over the next year or so his name will be projected on the walls of the Memorial at the following times:

• Fri 22 May, 2015 at 6:17 pm
• Fri 3 July, 2015 at 5:18 am
• Sun 16 August, 2015 at 3:18 am
• Mon 5 October, 2015 at 9:43 pm
• Sat 5 December, 2015 at 11:10 pm
• Wed 3 February, 2016 at 1:03 am
• Wed 30 March, 2016 at 9:49 pm
• Mon 16 May, 2016 at 8:12 pm
• Mon 27 June, 2016 at 10:37 pm

On 19 December 1918 Edward departed London on the "Argyllshire" to return home.  He arrived 1 February 1919.  Later that year he married Myrtle Addie Batten Beilby.

Thomas' effects were sent home on the "Bulla" and were received by Joseph Hinde his brother on 20 October 1919.  They comprised:

• pipe
• badges
• pocket knife
• match box cover
• YMCA wallet
• cigarette case
• 2 pencils
• coins
• devotional book
• steel mirror
• wallet
• photos
• leather belt
• letters

On 19 March 1921 the Army wrote a letter to Tom's mother Alice asking if she really was the next of kin to Tom in order to receive his medals.

Next of kin was determined by the Army as follows:

1. widow
2. eldest surviving son
3. eldest surviving daughter
4. father
5. mother

Here is her reply

National Archives of Australia B2455 HINDE T

An article in the Gold Coast Heritage Newsletter of August 2013 advises us that Joseph Hinde:

brought 15 hoop pines and one bunya pine from the Numinbah valley and planted the avenue of trees along Latimers Crossing Road in memory of his brother.  

I dragged a very patient friend out there last weekend with me to have a look.




Lest we forget.