#8/1384 Private John Joseph Sweeney
1ST OTAGO REGIMENT
ALSO SERVING IN AN OTAGO battalion was a 37-year-old Australian named John Sweeney. A bushman from Northern Tasmania, John was working for Payne & Sutherland at Pirinoa, near Wellington, when war was declared. He was quick to enlist, and originally joined the Wellington Mounted Rifles in October 1914, but was later transferred to the 1st Otago Regiment. Embarking in December 1914, John had reached Gallipoli by the following May, joining his regiment at Cape Helles. After serving there until the end of August, his service became sporadic. First, John was evacuated and admitted to hospital in Cairo with colitis. Having rejoined the 1st Otago towards the end of October, still on the peninsula, he was only with the battalion for two days before he was admitted to hospital again for another six-week stint away from the front.
The newly formed New Zealand Division arrived in France in April 1916. Much of its early time in the lines was spent acclimatising to the Western Front and mounting trench raids and improving defences. In mid-July the division has reached Armentières, where, after less than a week, John deserted.
It took five weeks for the authorities to apprehend him. On 11th September, pending a court martial, John was sent to the Somme, where his adopted countrymen had relocated in his absence. The court martial took place four days later. The verdict returned was guilty and John was sentenced to death.
Shortly before 6am on 2nd October, in the presence of a medical officer and a chaplain, John was executed by firing squad at 5:44am. In a sad footnote, his brother was killed in 1918. A broken man, shortly before the list of New Zealand wartime executions was made public, John’s father walked off into the bush and committed suicide by poisoning himself with strychnine. John Sweeney was laid to rest at Dartmoor Cemetery, plot II.B.1. I.
Grave of Private John Sweeney at Dartmoor Cemetery. (Andrew Holmes)