Daniel Malcolm Wann. Image courtesy ancestry.com
On 11 August 1918 Daniel Malcolm Wann received a gunshot wound to the neck as the 11th Battalion advanced near Morcourt in the closing hours of the Battle of Amiens. Daniel, aka Max, was evacuated to the 5th Australian Field Ambulance. He survived for two days before succumbing to his wounds on 13 August.
Daniel’s brother, Charles Alexander Wann, also serving on the Western Front, would die six weeks later, killed in action at St Quentin Canal on 30 September 1918.
Born in Orange in 1886, Daniel was the second son of Charles snr and Mary Ann nee Plowman. By 1903 the family had moved to Armadale in Western Australia, where Charles snr worked as a sleeper cutter.
In 1911 Daniel married Evelyn Maud Warren and settled at Bullsbrook, where Daniel worked as a teamster. The couples’ first child, Sydney Malcolm, was born in 1912, followed by Donald Charles in 1913, and Alice in 1916.
Daniel enlisted in Perth on 11 November 1916. He embarked HMAT A30 Borda at Fremantle on 29 June 1917, disembarking in Plymouth on 25 August 1917. Private Wann undertook further training at Durrington and Sutton Veny before proceeding to France in January 1918. He was taken on strength with the 11th Battalion on 22 January 1918.
On 20 June 2018 Daniel was admitted to the 3rd Australian Field Ambulance suffering from influenza. He rejoined his unit on 6 July and served for just five weeks before sustaining the injury that proved his demise.
Daniel Malcolm Wann is commemorated on panel number 64 on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Daniel Malcolm Wann memorial notice, West Australian, 29 August 1918, p1.
