THE SLOW SAD TRICKLE OF NEWS
WILLIAM JAMES HILL
1890 – 1916
In today’s communication saturated world it’s hard to imagine the agony wives, parents and loved ones must have faced during WWI as they waited for news from the battlefields of Europe.
Consider Mary Hill of 9 Amess Street, North Carlton.
Mary had married William Hill in 1913, given birth to their first child in 1914 and waved goodbye to her husband in November 1915.
William was a traveling salesman selling dairy products. Aged 25, he enlisted in July 1915 with the AIF 6th Battalion 12th Reinforcements. He was then assigned to the 2nd Field Company of Engineers.
He arrived in Egypt in late March 1916 and was quickly moved on to Marseilles, France. From there he was sent north to join his unit and by early June he was hard at work on the Western Front.
In July and August the Australian troops were fiercely engaged at Pozieres, a battle remembered for the ferocity of the artillery barrages that turned battlefields into mudheaps.
On the 17th August William Hill’s company of engineers was working at maintaining the Australian trench system near La Boiselle when William was killed by a shell blast.
For some reason his death was not recorded by those in command.
Instead, on the 18th August, William Hill was listed as “wounded” and a fortnight later this news was cabled to Australia.
In the second week of September 1916 this letter was posted to Mary Hill at 9 Amess Street:
Dear Madam, I regret to advise you No3797 Pte W.J.Hill 2nd Field Coy Engrs later 6th Batt has been reported wounded the nature of which and the names of the hospital to which he has been admitted are not at present known here, but on receipt of later information you will be promptly notified. It is not stated as being serious and in the absence of further reports it is to be assumed that all wounded are progressing satisfactorily. J M LEAN, Major Officer I/C Base Records.
We can imagine Mary being alarmed and worried, but the reassurance that “all wounded are progressing satisfactorily” must have kept her hopes up. At the bottom of the page there was even an address for Australian Army Headquarters in London where Mary could send letters. No doubt she did so, offering William details of their son’s progress, telling him about the local news in North Carlton and wishing him a speedy recovery.
Three months later on 20th December 1916 a cable was sent to Army Base records in Melbourne stating that Private William James Hill was now classified as “wounded and missing” and in early January this news was printed in the casualty lists that all newspapers published.
Even so, Mary’s hopes must have been kept alive. Perhaps he had been taken prisoner? Perhaps his hospital records had gone astray?
Surely she would still have been writing letters in the hope they would reach her husband.
Not until June 1917, nine months after her husband had been killed, did Mary receive a letter from AIF Base Records with news of the awful truth:
“I am now in receipt of advice which shows that he was killed in Action in France on 17th August 1916 and was buried on the Pozieres battlefield, France, on the same day, The Rev W E Dexter officiating.” Officer in Charge, Base Records 8th June 1917
Two months later Mary Hill received and signed for a small parcel containing her late husband’s “effects”, the few possessions he left behind in France. These were “an Arabic Book, Notebook, Brush, 2 Combs, diary”.
Was it any consolation, one wonders, for Mary to read her husband’s diary entries and to know his thoughts in the days leading up to his death?
Was she already numb with grief by the time this parcel arrived or did it plunge her into greater depths of sorrow?
Following the official notification of her husband’s death Mary Hill was granted a pension of two pounds per fortnight. Her son, William Victor Hill, received a pension of one pound per fortnight.
How Mary managed in the post-war years we don’t know.
But the echoes of her family tragedy continued.
In September 1920 Mary signed a receipt for William’s 1914-15 Star, a war medal.
Two years later she signed a receipt for his Memorial Plaque.
In February 1923 she signed for his Victory Medal.
And perhaps later still she would have been notified that her husband’s grave at Pozieres, like so many others, had been blown to smithereens by shell fire and that, in reality, Sapper William James Hill had no known grave.
There is a record that in 1934 a “Cemetery Register” was dispatched to Mary. This probably explained to her that her husband’s name was now to be found on a panel of the Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux.
One wonders if, later in life, she ever had the chance to see it.