Far from home: Australian migrant soldiers at Tyne Cot

Welcome back to the final chapter of this blog series illuminating the lives of migrant soldiers buried at Tyne Cot Cemetery.

This instalment will round off the series by discussing two migrant soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force.

If you haven’t read the first two parts of the series, Part one provides broader historical information on migration which is essential in contextualising the studies of individual soldiers that follow and then applies it to the cases of two migrant New Zealand soldiers. 

Part two then shifts the focus to two migrant soldiers of the Canadian Army. 

Tyne Cot Casualty Stories

An Antipodean melting pot

Image: Australian soldiers cooking up a meal in their dugout on the Western Front (© IWM (Q 583))

Previous blog chapters have by now established the broader trends of migration and settlement which determined the ethnic make-up of the dominion armies.

Much like those previously discussed of New Zealand and Canada, the Australian Army was a multicultural force comprised of soldiers from all continents.

Image: A recruitment propaganda poster typical of the time, portraying the Dominions as essential to the imperial war effort (© National Army Museum) 

However, these men were overwhelmingly of Anglo-Celtic origin. This is because Australia was a settler colony of Great Britain and then a dominion, largely populated by non-indigenous emigrants from the British Isles living in both urban and rural environments. 

Many emigrated to Australia willingly, and many in the earlier centuries landed there as British prisoners, as the island was a penal colony. Indeed, Australians were legally British subjects until as late as 1984.

By far the most high-profile soldier of emigrant stock was General John Monash. Born in Melbourne to Jewish parents from what is now Poland, Monash rose to dizzying heights throughout the First World War as the first Australian commander of the ANZAC Forces.

Monash’s enduring cultural legacy as one of the most respected and well-known Australian figures has been used by some to speak to the multicultural nature of Australian settler society and its reflection in the Australian Army.

Let us now turn to the story of a soldier of this army.

A first generation Dutch-Australian  - Private Henry John De Voogd

Like General Monash, Henry John De Voogd too was a second-generation European emigrant to Australia.

Image: A portrait of De Voogd, presumably in rugby attire (Passchendaele Archives)

Whilst not strictly a migrant himself, De Voogd was representative of a migrant community that was thriving in Australia at the time, and still is: the Dutch diaspora.

Today, 1.5% of modern Australians can trace their heritage to the Netherlands.

This is in large point to booming Dutch migration after the Second World War, but settlers had been arriving in Australia since the times of the Dutch East Indies, in the 1600s.

Sailing for gold

So how did Henry’s Dutch roots plant themselves in Australia? 

In 1862, his father, also Henry, boarded a ship in Hellevoetsluis, seeking to make his fortune in the Australian gold rush.

He settled in the newly established gold mining town of Eaglehawk, Victoria.

Gold had first been discovered there ten years earlier in 1852 and the area was experiencing a population boom driven by people like Henry who wanted their share of the riches.

It was there that he married Mary Ann Hamilton in 1881, with their son Henry John De Voogd arriving two years later.

A miner and musician 

Like his father, Henry Jr. became a miner. Outside of his occupation, he was also a talented rugby player and musician.

So much so, that when he enlisted in February 1916, he was earmarked for a spot in the Battalion band.

Henry also cut an imposing figure - at 5 foot 10 inches and 176lbs, he would have towered above many of his comrades, with the average height of the British Army at the time around 5 foot 6 inches.

As the son of an immigrant, Henry enlisted as a naturalised British citizen and likely did so out of a sense of service to his native Australia.

But first, he had to be shaped into a soldier worthy of the Australian Imperial Force.

He made the 2-month journey by boat from Fremantle to Plymouth in April 1916, arriving in June. After his period of training, he landed in France in August of that year.

To the front, the hospital and the court martial

Henry had a tumultuous period of service before he ended up in Flanders Fields in 1917.

He was severely injured in the wrist at the Somme in September, being shipped to a military hospital in Birmingham, England in September 1916 and not re-joining his unit until November.

He was even court-martialled for disobedience in December of the same year. He was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment with hard labour, a verdict that was suspended in January of 1917 for an unspecified reason.

He then spent March-April 1917 out of action in hospital once more before finally arriving in Flanders to fight at Passchendaele.

The infamous effort at Passchendaele

On the 12th of October 1917, Henry’s Division was tasked with protecting the right flank of the 3rd Australian Division during their bloody attack on Passchendaele.

Image: De Voogd’s grave at Tyne Cot Cemetery, XXXV. G. 18 (Find a Grave)

His battalion was in reserve during the attack and was sent up after dusk to relieve the attacking troops. It was during this manoeuvre that Henry’s company came under heavy artillery fire, and this is likely how he lost his life.

He became one of around 38,000 Australian casualties of the Third Battle of Ypres, which started on July 31st and didn’t end until the eventual capture of Passchendaele in November.

ANZAC losses were so severe that they were relieved en masse by the Canadians. 

A veteran of the Somme, injury and the court martial, Henry’s tumultuous period of service came to an end, like that of so many of his countrymen, on that day. 

He was 34 years old and now rests at Tyne Cot Cemetery (Plot 35, Row G, Grave 18), just down the ridge from the village of Passchendaele which would not be captured until a month later.

From De Voogd to ‘De Noogd’ and back again

Henry’s body was not found until 1920 when it was identified by identity disc.

It would appear that Henry’s unusual surname caused some degree of confusion amongst the exhumation teams, so much so that on his wooden cross it was incorrectly engraved as ‘De Noogd’.

His father complained to the army after his efforts to find his son’s grave were in vain, because he was looking for a name that didn’t exist in any cemetery register.

Luckily, the mistake was quickly rectified and Henry’s surname was restored to its correct spelling, much to his family’s relief. His current headstone now bears his correct name.

Private Sinclair Bennitt May

Another emigrant soldier with an equally fascinating story and a name perhaps equally prone to misprinting was Private Sinclair Bennitt (or Bennett) May.

The similarities, however, end here.

This is because unlike De Voogd, Private May was a first-generation emigrant to Australia and from an entirely different background.

Devonian beginnings

Sinclair was born in 1898 to Colin and Mabel May in Braunton, near Barnstaple, Devon and grew up in the remote village of Staverton, near Totnes in the same county.

At some point before or during the war, he made the decision, like thousands of his contemporaries across the country, to start afresh in Australia.

However, less usually, at the time of his enlistment into the Australian army in early January 1917, his age is given as just 19 years and 10 months.

Returning to Devon

What exactly drove Sinclair to join the army and leave his home so soon is unclear, but he was likely motivated by a sense of duty, lack of prospects in his new occupation, or both.

Image: Sinclair’s grave at Tyne Cot Cemetery, XVI. E. 2. (Find a Grave)

After he joined up, he boarded the military ship from Fremantle to, ironically, Devon, the county he had left not much earlier, arriving at the end of March 1917.

His period of training there was interspersed with illness as he was admitted to Park House General Hospital (in what is now Greater London) with mumps at the end of April, being discharged in mid-May.

He then set off for Le Havre, France in August and was officially taken on the strength of the 44th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force on the 1st of September 1917.

Marching to Belgium

It can be surmised that from here, Sinclair headed straight for Flanders’ fields, as on the 4th of October he was in the line preparing for the fateful attack at Broodseinde to capture the land upon which Tyne Cot Cemetery now stands.

Sinclair’s Battalion helped spearhead the attack in which the 3rd Australian Division, commanded by the aforementioned Major-General John Monash, captured the German blockhouses still standing at Tyne Cot. 

They suffered heavily for it – only around 15% of the battalion’s ~1000 men came out the other side unscathed.

An end before the beginning

Sinclair was one of these unfortunate casualties.

Tragically, he was killed before the battle even began. Records state he was hit by a shell and killed instantly whilst the battalion was assembling to attack.

Scores of his comrades were also killed during this German barrage, which opened up an hour before the attack was due to commence, catching the troops out in the open.

No precise burial spot was given in this document, but subsequent reports state he was buried on the 7th of January 1918, just over 3 months after his death.

Letters even still exist from the ‘Western Australia Trustee Executor’ in Perth requesting the official death certificate from the Australian Army in April 1918.

After the war, he was identified by his cross and then moved into Tyne Cot where he rests to this day, in Plot 16, Row E, Grave 2. His experience of war lasted just one month and 3 days.

He is also memorialized by a personal plaque in St Paul de Leon Church, in his home parish of Staverton, Devon.

Conclusion 

Henry and Sinclair’s remarkable stories conclude this three-part blog series by illuminating the lives of first- and second-generation emigrant soldiers who served in New Zealand, Canada and Australia and are now interred at Tyne Cot Cemetery.

It is hoped that these six examples, picked from a collection of tens of thousands, have helped to illustrate the vital and often overlooked importance of migration to the history of the First World War and beyond.

Regardless of this, their stories are also worthy of retelling for their own sake. They reveal the incredible determination and selflessness of emigrant soldiers, who fought on the other side of the world in the most unimaginable conditions for countries they often had no birth connection to. 

Their willingness to lay down their lives for their adoptive nations speaks not just to their courage on the battlefield, but also to their very character.

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