Timothy Eucharia Reen

REEN, Timothy Eucharia- – – SPC 1908

 

DoB:- – 1893, Hamilton, VIC

Father:- – Timothy Denis Reen

Mother:- – Catherine, nee Murphy

 

Service No:- 4282

Rank:- – Private

Unit:- – 5th Battalion

 

Tim Reen enlisted on 20 July 1915, aged 22 years and six months. He was five feet, three and a half inches tall, with a fair complexion, bluish eyes and light brown hair. He was an unmarried farmer.

 

Private Reen embarked from Australia on 29 December 1915, heading to France. He was admitted to No 7 General Hospital in France with mumps on 18 April 1916, and remained hospitalised for a month. He was again hospitalised in January 1917, in France, rejoining his unit in March of that year.

 

He was wounded in action in France and admitted to the military hospital at Havre, France on 10 May, rejoining his unit at the front on 7 July 1917. Private Reen’s service record shows he had a further two hospital admissions in France. The first of these due to influenza was for 20 days in June 1918, and the second for scabies meant another 52 days in hospital from 15 July 1918. He rejoined his unit on 5 September 1918 and a week later was sent to the UK on leave. While there he contracted venereal disease and spent a further 59 days in hospital.

 

He returned to Australia aboard the Ceramic on 25 January 1919, and was finally discharged from the AIF on 7 May 1919.

 

Upon his return to civilian life, Timothy Reen lived for a while with his sister, Norah in Hamilton. He married Eileen Gannon in 1942, when he was 50 years of age, and they lived in the northern Melbourne suburb of Reservoir. They had no children. Timothy worked as a railway employee before his death on 16 June 1956 at the age of 64 years.

 

He was buried at the Box Hill Cemetery, Victoria.