Barney Hines was always a rebel. Of Irish descent, born in Liverpool, England, in 1873, he ran away to enlist in the army at the age of 14 but was dragged home by his mother.
Two years later he joined the Royal Navy and saw action during the Boxer Rebellion when he served on a gunboat chasing pirates in the China Sea.
Dischargd after a bad bout of malaria, he went gold seeking around the world and was in South Africa during the Boer War. He served as scout with various British units.
His lust for gold continued and he searched for it in the US, South America and New Zealand, but he was working in a sawmill in Australia when the Great War broke out in August 1914.
Despite being in his early 40s, he immediately tried to enlist but was turned down on medical grounds. Undeterred, he haunted recruting centres until he was accepted to serve in France 1916 as part of a reinforcement for the 45th Battalion, and once in France, the legend of this huge, powerful man who never showed fear, began.
He generally showed disdain for conventional weapons such as his Lee Enfield rifle preferring to go into actioin with two sandbags packed with Mills bombs.
His commanding officer had a brainwave and give him a Lewis Gun, which was an immediate success. Hines was entranced by its spraying effect and announced in his broad Liverpudlian accent: "This thing'll do me. You can hose the bastands down."
Another nickname he earned was Wild Eyes and at a later date the commanding officer was heard to say: "I always felt secure when Wild Eyes was about. He was a tower of strength in the line - I don't think he knew what fear was and he naturally inspired confidence in officers and men".
One of Hines' pastimes was prowling around collecting prisoners and loot with enthusiasm. On one occasion, annoyed at sniper fire from a German pill-box, he charged, screaming abuse, straight at it, leapt on its roof and performed a war dance while taunting the Germans to come out. When they failed to comply, Hines lobbed a couple of Mills bombs through a gun port. A few minutes later the 63 Germans who had survived staggered out with their hands above their heads. Hines collected his "souvenirs" before herding his prisoners back to Australian lines.
Another time he came across a battered German dressing station. Creeping in, he found the surgeon standing over the operating table and, on tapping him on the shoulder, Hines was amazed to watch him topple over - dead from a shell splinter in the heart. Only one man survivged - ironically a wounded Tommy who was on a stretcher on the floor out of the blast. Picking the man up as if he were an infant, Hines carried him towards safety but he died before reaching the Allied lines. Hines lowered him gently to the ground then returned to the loot in the dressing station.
His booty wasn't confined to portable keepsakes. At Villers-Bretonneux, he liberated a piano which he managed to keep for several days until he was persuaded to give it away. On another occasion he scored a grandfather clock which he carried back to the trenches. But after its hourly chimes were found to attract German fire, his mates blew it up with a Mills bomb.
In Armentieres, he came across a keg of Bass which he started to roll towards the battalion. He was stopped by military police and told not to go any further with it. Unfazed, Hines left the keg and went ahead to round up fellow Diggers who returned to drink it on the spot.
When the AIF reached Amiens they found the beautiful cathedral city deserted. It was too much for Hines. He disappeared and was finally sprung by British military police in the vaults of the Banque de France where he had already squirelled away milions of francs, packed neatly in suitcases. He was hauled off for questioning by the British who, nonplussed on what to do with the reprobate, returned him to his unit. Later he was to boast that the escapade had cost him no more than 14 days pay and that he had been allowed to keep the banknotes he had stuffed into his pockets.
But for all his incorrigibility, he was an outstanding, if unpredictable soldier who managed to capture ten German soldiers single-handed. Lining them up in a shell hole before collecting his souvenirs, he was spotted by an officer who called out to see if he needed help. Hines, believing the officer wanted to join in the pickings, snarled: "You burl off and harpoon a bunch of your own", and as it was Hines, the officer burled off.
There were some near misses too. At Passchendaele, he was the only survivor of a direct hit on the Lewis gun nest. Blasted 20m and with the soles of his boots blown off, he crawled back, got the gun working and continued firing until he fainted from wounds in his legs.
Hines was also renowed for the party he held at Villers-Bretonneux after he found a cache of 1870 champagne and tinned delicacies. His mates were all decked out in top hats and dress suits which he had also acquired. It was to be his last party for some time. Just after it ended he scored a bullet wound over his eye, another in his leg and a whiff of gas. Despite protests, he was hospitalised at Etaples, nearly blind. A few nights after the Germans bombed the hospital, causing 3000 casualties, Hines hauled himself out of bed, found a broom which he used as a crutch and spent all night carrying the wounded and dying to safety. After that, he was invalided home and in the ensuing years, despite his wounds, he worked as a drover, shearer, prospector and timber cutter.
He volunteered for World War II and, when he was turned down - he was now in his 60's - he stowed away on a troop ship. He was caught before the vessel got through the Heads and put ashore. After a colourful life, Barney Hines died in Concord Repatriation Hospital in Sydney on 30 January 1958.