Frank Robert HEANEY
Service No. 2414, Trooper, Imperial Camel Corps

An eighteen year old labourer from Cunninghame, Frank was born to Robert and Jane Heaney on 12 April 1898. He enlisted at the beginning of December 1915 and embarked on HMAT Clan Maccorquodale for Egypt on 6 May 1916 with the 8th Light Horse 17th Reinforcement.

On 1 July 1916 Frank was transferred to the Imperial Camel Corps, when another four Australian companies were raised from reinforcements intended for the Australian Light Horse regiments. Three weeks later he was hospitalised in Cairo with Nile Fever, a mosquito-borne virus, and did not rejoin his unit until 16 August 1916.

Frank Heaney was killed in action on 9 January 1917, during an attack on an entrenched Ottoman Army garrison near Rafa. This battle completed the recapture of the Sinai Peninsula by British forces during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and forced the Ottoman Army to withdraw their Sinai outposts towards Gaza.

Trooper Heaney was buried in the field the following day, but later reinterred in grave F283 at the Kantara War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt. He is remembered on the Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour and at Lakes Entrance and Traralgon.

His mother Jane requested return of his personal effects on several occasions, but none could be found. Ironically, in the years after the war, Jane Heaney married a German and moved to Callignee in the LaTrobe Valley.