By BIG PAT
HILL 60. Messines. The bugle call of World War 1's tunnel rats.
And yes, it did get very dangerously messy most times. At least
for an Aussie boy, who now lies at rest under the scorching Papuan sun in a sun
baked dry Papuan Valley, Messines wasn't the most pleasant place to be.
Along with 19 others, who joined him with the march of father
time, Sapper Private Daniel Hickey was just one of a handful who saw action at
Gallipoli, the time stamped, famous trenches of the tumultuous Great War of the
last century.
Messines and its famous Hill 60 epitomised the desperation of the
allied forces in the trenches of the conflict of 1914-1918 in faraway Europe
just as the opening shots of Gallipoli crafted itself as the lost campaign that
took the innocence of so many men.
Was he one of them? Which tunnel was he digging out? Where did
this brave sapper, his heart pounding a deafening beat, hold his breath, as the
enemy guns opened up on his frontline.
What chance did sapper Hickey stand with his flimsy tin hat in the
labyrinth under Hill 60?
It seemed, by pure luck and plucky larrikin Aussie chance, Hickey
did survive the barrages of the enemy guns and the high explosives.
And that he did crawl out of his tunnel alive to make it back to
Australia. And that he died, a proud soldier, dug in and interred in the
Australian Territory of Papua aged 58.
HILL 60 remains poignant in the history of WWI, if not for the
foolhardy desperation of the English and her allies, or the heroics of famous
tunnellers like Major Edward of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, but for
the ingenuity of cooks and miners, who dug dig deep down in the face of
adversity so that victory would be within their grasp, like a miner striking a
rich vein deep beneath the earth.
Men like sapper Hickey may have evaded the limelight, shunned the
public acclaim, but the truth is, 'bloody oath, Hickey was there!'
And now Hickey, along with his brothers in arms, lies here at 9 Mile outside Port Moresby, in
Papua New Guinea.
6976 Sapper (Private) Daniel HICKEY
Born 1888 at Wexford, Ireland.
Occupation: Cook. Enlisted at
Paddington on 16 October 1916. Attached to Tunnellers in Engineering
Corps. Embarked for England on 11 May
1917 then embarked for France on 9 September 1917. Wounded by gassing on 13 March 1918 and
evacuated to England. Returned to France
on 18 August 1918 and rejoined 1st Tunnelling Company.
Sapper Hickey returned to Australia on 12 July 1919 and was
discharged from the Army on 29 August 1919.
His Probate Notice states that he was working as a cook in Port Moresby
when he died on 30 October 1951. Nothing
else known at this time.
They shall grow not old, as we that
are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
LEST WE FORGET
