Service Details
- Branch of Service
- Army
- Conflict
- World War I (1914-1918)
- Date of Enlistment
- 16/12/1915
- Place of Enlistment
- Moore Park, Sydney NSW
Personal Details
- Gender
- Male
- Place of Birth
- Greenock, Scotland
- Address (at enlistment)
- Berowra NSW (previously Duntroon ACT)
- Occupation
- Plasterer
- Next of Kin
- Isabella McKean (wife) of Berowra NSW. He was the son of of William and Mary Thornton McKean of Greenock, Scotland.
Unit and Rank Details
- Service Number
- 6677
- Final Rank
- Sapper
- Final Unit
- 7 Field Company Engineers AIF
Fate
Died (killed in action) near Flers, France on 14 November 1916.
Commemoration
26 Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, France
Notes
McKean worked for the Department of Home Affairs before the war and played in one of the first soccer games in the district in July 1912 for a Home Affairs team against RMC. Locally he was reknown for his club swinging ability. This involved performing a number of manouevres with clubs lit by methylated spirits. He had married Isabella Simpson from Grenfell on 3 February 1912 in Newtown, Sydney and his wife moved to Canberra in August 1913 to be close to her husband, but apparently could not find accommodation as McKean testified to a licensing enquiry in Queanbeyan in November 1913. He had served with the Scottish Horse in the Boer War.
McKean arrived in France in May 1916 and joined 4 Section in the 7th Field Company Engineers in July just before they moved to Pozieres. Afterwards he was sent to the Ypres sector then back to the Somme at Bazentin to erect Nissen huts used for accommodating soldiers behind the front line which was then near Flers. On 13 November 1916 his section moved to Turk Lane on the front line at Flers. The following day, 14 November, the 5th Brigade of the AIF attacked enemy positions near Bayonet Trench. McKean was a member of a party constructing strong points in the newly occupied trenches when he was killed. Isabella, his widow, struggled on making a living from raising poultry before marrying again in 1919. She died in Berowra in July 1939.
Description - height 5 feet 5 inches, weight 122 pounds, chest 33-36 inches, fresh complexion, brown eyes, brown hair, Presbyterian.
Sources
AWM Roll of Honour Memorial Panel 24, Canberra ACT
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)
Queanbeyan Age - 19 July 1912, 6 May 1913, 15 August 1913, 17 October 1913, 7 November 1913
Queanbeyan/ Canberra Advocate - 11 December 1916
Sydney Mail - 31 January 1917
R.H. Chatto, 'The Seventh Field Company Engineers'
Patricia Clarke, 'War Widows of the ACT', www.womenaustralia.info/exhib/widows/mckean.html