Saddler Sergeant James Patrick Shannon, 5th Queensland Imperial Bushmen
Australian War MemorialJames “Jimmy” Shannon was born in Queensland around 1880. By 1900, he was living in Charters Towers with his mother and brothers.
He enlisted with the 5th Contingent of the Queensland Imperial Bushmen in early 1901, leaving Australia within weeks with the No.1.
Shannon’s contingent arrived in South Africa after the major set-piece battles and sieges were over but guerrilla-type skirmishes with the Boers had begun. By late 1901, the Queenslanders were very busy on patrol and regularly met with the enemy.
One of Jimmy Shannon’s fellow members of the Queenslanders, Trooper William Lilley, described one skirmish in December 1901, “We have had a good ‘cut’ at [the Boers] and for about an hour the bullets came down as thick as a shower of rain. There were 11 of our men wounded and one killed. We had another ‘go in’ yesterday … I can assure you the Boers ‘went’ very smartly. We knocked a few of them over, however.”
Two weeks later, at Onverwacht, Boer forces drew the Australians into an area where they were outnumbered. Trooper Charles Bryce wrote, “we simply marched into a huge trap amongst the hills, and we were surrounded in minutes.”
Eleven Queenslanders were killed in action, and Sergeant Shannon was badly wounded.
Bryce later said: “I owe my life and escape to a sergeant of ours, named Jimmy Shannon, No. 1 of the contingent, who galloped into the firing line.”
Bryce had fallen from his horse and Shannon pulled him up onto his own horse to get him out. Shannon then caught Bryce’s horse and gave it to two other men pinned down by Boer fire, ensuring their escape. Bryce found another horse and got out; Shannon returned to help more men.
Trooper William Walsh watched Shannon rush back to rescue more wounded men. He later wrote, “he picked up one wounded man and carried him about 200 yards away, and put him safely under cover. While he was doing this, there was a terrific fire going on from the enemy… when he had put the man safely away, he rushed back for another, but, poor chap. He just bent down to pick up a man when he was hit.”
Shannon was taken to hospital, an arduous journey over rough roads in an ambulance wagon but died of his wounds. He was 21 years old.
His mother later put a poem in the local newspaper to mourn his death. It reads in part:
Only the death of a boy at the front,
Only a weeping mother at home,
Bewailing the war where she lost her son,
Breaking her hear because he would roam.
And no one cares, for they daily die
Out there on the veldt in the cruel war.
What if mothers weep and brothers mourn?
They cannot be heard mid the cannon’s roar.
Trooper Walsh later wrote, “there is one thing to be proud of, no matter how things go, he proved himself to be as brave a man as ever fought.”
Meleah Hampton
