Sapper Charles Arthur Finn, 13th Field Company, Australian Engineers, AIF
Australian War MemorialCharles Arthur Finn was born in 1888 to Dennis and Eliza Finn of Canowindra, New South Wales. He attended St Joseph’s Convent School at Peak Hill. After school, he became a blacksmith in Gilgandra. He was tall and red-haired, which automatically earned him the nickname of “Bluey”.
In October 1915, Finn joined the Coo-ee March. These recruitment drives were called “snowball marches” because it was hoped that they would gather recruits as they went, like a snowball rolling down a hill.
The Coo-ee March was the brainchild of Captain Bill Hitchen, under whose command the group of men, including Charles Finn, left Gilgandra on the 300-mile march to enlist in Sydney.
Finn successfully enlisted on 9 October 1915 and was posted to the 1st Field Company of Australian Engineers. After a period of training in Australia, he was sent to Egypt and then to England, to continue training. Finn was finally transferred to the 13th Field Company of the Australian Engineers and sent to fight on the Western Front in August 1916.
In late November 1916, as the winter drew in, Finn was sent to hospital suffering from influenza. Further health problems kept him in hospitals or rest camps until late February 1917. He finally re-joined his unit in the field in mid-March.
In early 1917, the Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line, a strong, carefully prepared series of trenches. As they went, they hid mines in wells and buildings.
In April 1917, Finn was a member of a section billeted in the French village of Vaulx-Vraucourt, where they were locating mines in wells and repairing them. Finn and Lance Corporal John Maxwell Shepherd were taking detonators out of an unexploded mine when an artillery shell landed nearby. It set off the mine, and both men were killed instantaneously.
Charles Finn was 29 years old.
His name is listed on the Australian War Memorial Honour Roll, among more than 60,000 Australians who died during the First World War.
Meleah Hampton, Historian, Military History Section
Image: The commencement of a "Coo-ees" route march to Sydney where the marchers hoped a great many men would join them en route to enlist in one of the armed services to assist the war effort, c. October 1915.
- Australian War Memorial https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2278409
