Teacher saw boys off to war

THE war years must have been particularly hard for Berwick State School headmaster Henry McCann.
Boys whose lives he helped shape in the schoolyard were being sent off to the battlefields of Europe as young men. A few kept in touch with him by letter. Many didn’t return.
Mr McCann’s paternal pain ran a lot deeper; his two sons, Ashley and Harry, enlisted as privates and returned at the end of the war as highly decorated lieutenants.
At least they made it home – Ashley having earned a Distinguished Flying Cross and his younger brother a Military Cross for work ‘above and beyond’ during the Palestine campaign.
In October 1915, Ashley sent home a collection of war trophies from Gallipoli – the brass top of a shrapnel shell, shrapnel bullets, Turkish cartridges in clips and pieces of twisted copper bands off discharged big shells.
Mr McCann had them displayed in Mr Crabtree’s shop window in High Street.
He noted that it was interesting to learn that “our cartridges will not fit the Turkish rifles but their cartridges can be fired from our rifles”.
Mr McCann and the school played a pivotal role in the community during the war years.
Berwick’s first Anzac Day ceremony took place on school grounds on 25 April 1916, the first anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli landing, where a roll of honour was unveiled of the 51 former students who had enlisted to date.
Mr McCann told the assembled crowd that the school had done well in its patriotic work, having raised 40 pounds for the cause and the girls, assisted by Miss Paul, had made a large number of articles.
A great photo in the keeping of the Berwick and Pakenham Historical Society shows Mr McCann sitting in the middle of his students in July 1916, with all the girls knitting socks for the troops. In the far left corner of the back row is a young Herb Thomas, the long-time Gazette editor and son of newspaper’s founder Albert Edward Thomas.
That day alone, the school sold 116 Anzac badges for a return of 8 pounds, 11 shillings and sixpence.
Local councillor W.G. a’Beckett finished his address by saying: “By their heroism they had stamped their names in golden letters on the military annals of the world”.
The proceedings closed with a gramophone recording of the Last Post. The children saluted the flag and lollies and fruit were handed around.
Mr McCann was transferred to Malmsbury in August 1917, after many years of service in Berwick and Beaconsfield before that.
A.E. Thomas wrote in the Gazette that he had been a prominent member of the Berwick and District Football Association until it disbanded at the outbreak of war.
“He has never allowed his love of sport to interfere with school duties and the record of merit certificates obtained by the school over the past three or four years gives evidence of that fact,” Mr Thomas wrote. “He is methodical, painstaking and conscientious of the children placed in his charge. His removal from the district will be generally regretted.”