Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Vincent Jeremiah Cashman was born in May 1892 in Preston, Victoria, to Jeremiah Vincent Cashman and Sarah Ann (Black) Cashman. Vincent Jeremiah became a Currier for J.P. Howe and Co Pty Ltd of Preston, manufacturers of enamelled and patent leather. (A currier is a specialist in the leather processing industry. After the tanning process, the currier applies techniques of dressing, finishing and colouring to the tanned hide to make it strong, flexible and waterproof. The leather is stretched and burnished to produce a uniform thickness and suppleness, and dyeing and other chemical finishes give the leather its desired colour.) A month after the outbreak of World War 1, Vincent Jeremiah Cashman enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 18 August 1914 and was posted to the 2nd Field Ambulance, Australian Army Medical Corps. The 2nd Field Ambulance was raised in Victoria in 1914. After training at Broadmeadows camp it sailed to Egypt from Melbourne, Victoria on board HMAT A18 Wiltshire on 19 October 1914. After several months training in the desert Vincent Jeremiah Cashman and the 2nd Field Ambulance landed at Gallipoli with the 2nd Brigade on the 25th April 1915. Vincent was a stretcher carrier providing medical support for the 2nd Infantry Brigade. After the withdrawal from Gallipoli in December 1915, the Brigade returned to Egypt. In March 1916 the 2nd Field Ambulance left for the Western Front for the first battle of the Somme at Pozières, where the Australians suffered heavy losses of men in the battle in six weeks as they had in the whole Gallipoli Campaign. With the end of the Battle of the Somme in mid-November, the Australians settled into their winter quarters like the British, the French and the Germans. Vincent Jeremiah Cashman, now a driver, returned to the Somme in 1917 for the battles on the Hindenburg Line (April), Ypres (July), Pozieres and in March 1918, Hazebrouk. Vincent Cashman returned to Melbourne, Australia, on 23 October 1918, a few weeks before the armistice on 11 November 1918. In 1924 Vincent Jeremiah Cashman had the occupation as a Tramways Employee. In 1938, Vincent Jeremiah Cashman married Josephine Lily Nowlan, a Machinist born on 25 July 1905 in Carisbrook, Victoria, to Patrick Martin Nowlan and Josephine Storey Birkett. They would have one child, Gerald Vincent, born in 1941. In 1949, the family was listed as living in Brunswick West, Victoria, with Vincent Jeremiah Cashman having the occupation as a Timber Worker. Vincent Jeremiah Cashman died in West Brunswick, Victoria on 8 August 1956, aged 64 years.