HAGEN, Frederick Leslie Hay (1908-1940)
Born at Traralgon on 9 August 1908, the son of Henry Alexander Hagenauer (Hagen) and Margaret Bruce Hay, he was enrolled at Geelong College on 16 February 1921 as a boarder in the Lower IV Form. He had previously attended Grange St School, South Yarra. He left in December 1921, going on to Scotch College, Melbourne.
He was enrolled as Frederick Leslie Hay Hagen. His father had probably shortened his name during World War I due to anti-German sentiment. He later went to England in about 1937 and acted under the stage name of 'Michael Worth'.
He enlisted at the outbreak of war (under the name of Michael Worth) in the famous Black Watch as a private, and received a commission during 1940. While serving abroad he was wounded, and later died at the Stoke Military Hospital, England, aged 32.
His Old Scotch Collegian Association War Records Form, received on 14 October 1940 (the day after he died), carries this note:
'When attending Scotch College I was 'Hagen', and changed my name by Deed Poll in 1935 to 'Worth'. I have been resident in London for nine years. After spending four months in the ranks of the Black Watch - in which I enlisted as it was my family regiment - at the ITC in Perth, (Scotland), I was sent to an Officer Cadet Training Unit at Dunbar on the east coast of Scotland, where I gained my commission on the 4th July, being posted forthwith to the Black Watch.'
He died of wounds suffered while serving with the 1st Batallion The Tyneside Scottish Royal Highlanders (The Black Watch) on 13 October 1940, and was buried in Plymouth (Weston Mill) Cemetery, Sec C. Cons. Grave 5325. There are 556 Second World War burials here, eleven of which are unidentified; the cemetery also contains fourteen non-war service burials, and 36 war graves of other nationalities, 25 of them Polish.
Sources: Edited extract from Geelong Collegians at the Second World War compiled by James Affleck. p 34 (citing The Pegasus; Australian War Memorial; Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Photo The Pegasus).