3112 PTE. P. CANNON, R.A.M.C.
Patrick Cannon was born circa 1883/4 in Stirling. Upon enlistment (4 November 1902) he was aged 19 years 8 months and living in the town. He had previously been a labourer, and gave his next of kin as his mother, Ann, and brothers James and Michael. He enlisted at Stirling (part of the 91st Regimental District) for three years' service in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, being passed as medically fit on 4 November. There is some suggestion that recruitment to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers was closed at this time; however Cannon was recorded as "A smart recruit who refuses to join any other corps" and it seems to have been managed that he could join. His physical description describes him as standing 5' 4", weighing 118lbs, and having a high complexion, hazel eyes and dark red hair. He was a Roman Catholic. After being posted to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Depot (at Naas) on 9 November 1902, there to get his regimental number of 8564, he joined RDF 'Details' on 14 March 1903, and then proceeded to the 2nd battalion later that year, possibly the next month or in November. As of May 1903, the battalion was garrisoned at Aden, subsequently returning to Dublin [in November?] that year. Pte Cannon received his first good conduct badge on 4 November 1904. Between 1904 and 1905 he undertook a course in signalling.
He joined Section 'A' of the 1st Class Army Reserve on 16 February 1905, but then appears to have transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps as a private on 16 February 1906, presumably being released from the Reserve to do so (certainly the fragmentary 'certificate of release' at the foot of his engagement document is filled in, and dated February 1906). He was subsequently given the service number 3112. He married Sarah Conway at Stirling on 28 February 1908. He was medically examined prior to transfer to the Reserves (presumably the standard Section 'B' Army Reserve) at Stirling on 21 January 1909, and was pronounced 'fit', apparently transferring on 2 May 1909. At around this time he also appears to have undergone training at the RAMC School of Instruction at Leith Fort. Subsequently there is a record for him attending for training at the Military Hospital [Stirling] in 1911, endorsed by O.C. 13 Company RAMC.
Pte Cannon re-engaged into the Section 'D' Reserve of the RAMC (his Reserve commitment being due to cease in the coming November) in July 1914 for a further four years. By 1914 he was employed as a miner. Having been mobilized/recalled to the Colours on or around 7 August, reporting at Leith Fort, he was posted to the 3rd Field Ambulance of the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Division at Aldershot on 9 August 1914, one of 42 reservists joining on this, the sixth day of mobilisation. Each Field Ambulance, at full strength, was composed of 10 officers and 224 men, divided into three Sections, each with a Stretcher Bearer and Tented subsection (although it appears that the 3rd FA, at least, often operated its tented sections as a single unit, and its bearer sections likewise). Mobilisation was essentially complete by the ninth day (12 August) and the unit spent the last few days before entraining on the 18th in practice (pitching tents, etc), demonstrations (first field dressings) and route marches. The Field Ambulance entrained in two parties at 5.15 and 6.38am respectively, and Pte Cannon proceeded overseas to the France and Flanders theatre on 18/19 August 1914 with them, via SS 'Welshman' (save the General Service wagons, which travelled aboard the SS Achilbister). After a brief spell in Camp at Boulogne, the Ambulance entrained for Aulnoye and progressed in stages to Le Grand Fayt, where they arrived and billeted on 25 August and received their first wounded men. More wounded were taken on at Etrieux on the 27th and the first burials took place. Meanwhile the parent division was taking part in the Battle of Mons and the subsequent retreat, which the Ambulance participated in, evacuating cases as it went, the bearer division and its ambulance wagons often following the infantry to help with cases of sore feet; the war diary for early September comments on the constant movement and the impact of lack of sleep on some of the men. Subsequent service took in the Battles of the Marne, Aisne (where the Ambulance took over care of 300 casualties collected in buildings in the village of Vendresse on arrival, remaining in the Villers-Vendresse area until mid-October) and, later in the year, First Ypres. In the latter, the 3rd Brigade was engaged by the enemy en route to Langemarck on 21 October and the bearer division formed a dressing station at Farm Bossaert half a mile south of the village, accommodating the wounded in tents and sending forward stretcher bearers to search for and bring away further wounded. 250 wounded men passed through the dressing station in the three days 21 to 23 October 1914. The Field Ambulance also suffered its first fatal casualties, with Privates Horgan, Dufty and Parry of 'A' Section being killed in the vicinity of Gheluvelt chateau by a shell striking the lintel of a doorway in which they were sheltering, whilst waiting if called-for to supply a stretcher party. Meanwhile the tented section was making L'Ecole Bienfaisant on the Menin Road near Ypres into a suitable divisional collecting station, by 9 November having treated in excess of 3000 men and (as noted in the war diary, also 9 November) having "...become the most advanced dressing station by the progress of the engagement". The station had also been under fire by large shells and arrangements had had to be made to evacuate the wounded to the cellars, where straw had been placed. By the time the 3rd Field Ambulance had been ordered to leave on 16 November, 5391 casualties had been treated. The work done by the unit at Ypres was given special mention by the CinC BEF, Sir John French, when he inspected it at Outtersteen on 1 December. A royal inspection by HM King George V followed on 3 December. It was during this period that Pte Cannon gained his entitlement to the August-November clasp to the 1914 Star, confirming his status as an Old Contemptible. He also appeared on a list of 'Stirling Catholics for Active Service' in the Stirling Observer for Tuesday 29 September 1914 as 'Patrick Cannon, Miner - RAMC' under the heading (seemingly incorrectly) 'Special Reserve'.
By late December the 3rd Brigade was back in the line at Festubert and the 3rd Field Ambulance, setting up a dressing station under the bearers section at Chateau Gorre, was dealing with its first cases of Trench Foot, as well as suffering a fourth fatality, Pte Birch, ASC, killed by shelling at the dressing station. Accordingly, mem of the bearers section were accommodated in the village, not at the chateau, and wounded after being seen to were "sent on straight to No1 F.A at BEUVRY, as it is scarcely safe to allow them to remain in the CHATEAU for long on account of shelling" (war diary, 1 January 1915). The tent sections, meanwhile, were at L'Ecole Jeune Garcons, Bethune. Mid-January saw the situation change with the bearer sections being sent to Beuvry, with the school serving as an advanced dressing station and 'the chateau' being the location of the motor ambulance: "Once daily the Bearers and motor ambulances go out to collect the area of the two brigades, which is a duty we find it better to do by day as a rule" (war diary, 16 January 1915). On the 25th the diary comments "This morning there was an [attack] by the Germans and severe fighting. We were occupied all today and until 6.30 a.m. on the 26th in getting in wounded, dressing them and evacuated [sic] them. My own tents division and all the hospitals were ordered away to the other side of Bethune, so that my small dressing station had some 470 wounded men to deal with, and many sick men too." Subsequently the FA took over the wards of the Civil and Military Hospital at Bethune again for the wounded, the sick going to No.1 FA, also in the town, until closed in early February.
Pte Cannon is recorded as having received a gunshot wound to the head, on or about 6 February 1915. At this time the 3rd Field Ambulance was still with the 1st Division (it moved to the Guards Division in August 1915, receiving orders whilst at Fouquieres) and was based at La Beuvriere, the tented sub-division having recently been relieved from duty at the civil and military hospital, Bethune, and the bearer sub-division relieved from Beuvry. Accordingly, he was Listed as "Wounded" on the Casualty List issued by the Home Office on the 19th September 1915. Meanwhile, the Field Ambulance continued with the tented division in Bethune (by now at Ecole Paul Bert), whilst the bearer section was working under arrangements made to extend its operations to the Neuve Chapelle area until 17 April, when the 3rd Brigade moved to La Touret. The division was subsequently caught up in the Battle of Aubers, 9 May 1915, the war diary commenting "A battle took place in which we were involved and the attack caused a great number of casualties. We were employed in bringing men in, nearly all on the shoulders of stretcher bearers, because motor ambulances were not allowed up. The stretcher bearers worked with great energy & enthusiasm. At about 3.15 p.m. a further attack was made with an equal result as far as casualties were concerned. The bearers had therefore the whole proceeding to go through again". Later General Haking of the 1st Division sent a letter thanking the men for the way they worked. A week later the Field Ambulance took in over 200 wounded from the 2nd and 7th Divisions, incurred in the course of a further attack, at the Ecole Paul Bert, and at the end of May moved to Fouquieres, where it remained more or less constantly into August 1915. In mid-July, the bearer division took over the Cambrin and Vermelles sectors, including arrangements for a detachment at the trench position known as 'Guys and Barts' to take over patients from regimental stretcher bearers. Here, the war diary commented "Owing to the length of communication trenches & the narrowness of them stretchers cannot be used very well, and a special trench chairs made of canvas & poles, in which a man can be carried in a sitting position are being provided".
Having been continued in service under the Military Service Act 1916, it seems possible that some time in the latter part of 1916 Pte Cannon returned home for a period before being posted overseas again. Certainly, at the beginning of March 1917 Pte Cannon was seemingly with No.11 General Hospital, BEF; his wife wrote to the authorities at this point asking that he be permitted to return home as a miner, noting that he had been out since in 1914. Nothing seemingly came of this.
Pte Cannon finally returned home on 28 March 1918, possibly to join the strength of the 13th Company RAMC, and was ultimately processed for discharge through No.1 Dispersal Unit at Georgetown, proceeding on 28 days' demobilisation furlough on 25 February 1919.
He was discharged on 25 February 1919, owing to sickness ('surplus to military requirements, having suffered an impairment in service' - paragraph 392 xvi a of King's Regulations), aged 35 years 11 months. He had accumulated 16 years 114 days service. Entries relating to discharge on his military history sheet describe his character as fair, and his disability as 'sprained knee' He was medical category B.II on discharge. At this time his address was 32 Upper Castlehill, Stirling. He appears to have been demobilised to the Section 'D' Army Reserve (corrected from 'B' on his Military History sheet). The local war pensions committee assessed his disablement as 20% for six months.
He was entitled to the Silver War Badge, number B313385, which he would have received some time after October 1919, the King's Certificate (which he received that month) and also the British War and Victory Medals, along with the 1914 Star with clasp.
