Sweeney, Private Thomas

Service highlights

  • Service number: 401307
  • Enlisted: 4 August 1915, London, Ontario
  • Residence and next of kin: St. Marys, Ontario, wife Mrs. Elizabeth Sweeney
  • Born: London, England, 19 February 1879
  • Trade: Watchmaker
  • Previous service: 5 years with the 3rd Middlesex in England,
  • Units: 33rd Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, later transferred to the 58th Battalion
  • Overseas: Sailed from Halifax in April 1916 on the troopship Lapland, arrived in England 8 May 1916
  • Wounded: 30 July 1916, near Ypres, gunshot wound to the left arm with a fractured radius
  • Discharged: 15 July 1917, London, Ontario, permanently unfit for service

A Life and Service Remembered

Thomas Sweeney came to the Canadian Army as a grown man with experience behind him. He had already served five years with the 3rd Middlesex back in England, and when he enlisted in London, Ontario in 1915 he was fifty years old, older than many of the men training beside him. In St. Marys he was a watchmaker, a trade that depends on patience, steady hands, and careful work.

His early service also placed him in the middle of a tense moment in the city. In November 1915, while the 33rd Battalion was training in London, Ontario, a downtown disturbance broke out after a soldier was arrested. Crowds of soldiers gathered, there was a clash at the police station, and damage was reported around the core before order was restored with pickets and tightened discipline. For the battalion, it was a public and uncomfortable episode during a period when many men were frustrated by delays and the long wait to go overseas.

Before Thomas made it overseas his son William enlisted with the Perth’s, the110th Battalion. He left Canada in the spring of 1916 and soon after arriving in England on the troopship SS Lapland, he was transferred to the 58th Battalion and sent on toward the front.

In early July, north of Mount Sorrel, he was beside 401331 Private Frederick Render when Render briefly lifted his head above the parapet and a German sniper shot him immediately. Thomas pulled him down under cover and ran for help, but Render died before stretcher bearers could bring him out.

We cannot know every detail of their friendship, but two facts sit next to each other in a way that is hard to ignore: they were both from St. Marys, and they enlisted on the same day to the same unit, they travelled to England on the same ship and they were both transferred to the 58th Battalion. It is very possible they knew each other well before the war, and if they did not, they certainly did after months of training and then shared danger in the same line. What is certain is that, in the moment it mattered, Thomas tried to save Frederick.

Only weeks later, Thomas was badly wounded himself in the Ypres Salient. His injury ended his front line service, but it did not erase what he carried home: the loss of a friend, the shock of the trenches, and the permanent cost of a bullet that shattered bone and changed the use of his arm.

For a watchmaker, an arm wound was more than a line on a service sheet. It threatened the fine, precise work that likely helped support his family. When the army finally discharged him as permanently unfit in July 1917, his service ended far from the battlefield, but not without cost. A year later in August on 1918 his son William was wounded by shellfire and shortly after died of his wounds. For Thomas, his sons name would forever be remembered next to his friend on the cenotaph erected in the center of their home town.

Major battles and operations

  • Home front service in Ontario during the 33rd Battalion’s training period, including the tense London, Ontario incident of November 1915
  • Western Front service with the 58th Battalion in the Ypres Salient area
  • Wounded during operations near Ypres, 30 July 1916, followed by prolonged hospitalization and rehabilitation in England

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