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[Page 22]
Early in 1939, on Friday 13 January, Tristram James sailed from Adelaide in the s.s. Remo for Genoa. From there he presumably travelled overland by train for his ultimate destination of England. There he resided for a time at a hotel in Brighton where English relatives were on holidays. The international situation at this time was one of tension and anxiety because of the unpredictable and threatening behaviour of the Nazi German Government. On 15 March 1939 Hitler entered Prague. Exactly one year earlier he had entered Vienna, it was almost a relief to the British people when a state of war began on 3 September 1939 between Great Britian and Nazi Germany.
But by this time of course Tristram James' own fighting days were over. Twelve days after the outbreak of this war. on Friday 15 September 1939, he died at Bolingbroke Hospital at Battersea in London. No information has been discovered about the circumstances of his admission to this hospital on this occasion, or the date of his admission, or of the manner of this death. He had been admitted to hospital so often, since he had been gassed" on the Western Front in Europe in April 1918, that he probably believed that this admission was just another routine one for treatment. He was not the kind of person who would have left any few last words" in respect of himself. It would have been much too dramatic for him to have behaved in this way.
The place of burial of Tristram James, if his remains were disposed of in this way in England, has not been discovered.