Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Cornelius (‘Con’) BYRON, (Service Number 4377) born 1887 in Redfern, joined the NSWGR Traffic Audit Office as an apprentice clerk in 1904, was promoted to junior clerk in 1908, clerk in 1912, and 7th grade clerk in 1914. This rather unexciting career masked the personality of ‘a fine type of young fellow, an efficient officer, a true companion, and last of all, the greatest, a hero, who gave up his life of great promise for his country’: so he was remembered in the ‘NSW Railway & Tramway Budget’ (the staff magazine) in February 1917, after news of his death was known, and as a fine all-round cricketer, who played first grade cricket with the Redfern Club, and had represented NSW Railways against Victoria in Melbourne in 1913.
Con Byron had joined the AIF at Casula at the end of 1915, he was embarked from Sydney in April 1916 and joined his unit on the Western Front in October. He was killed in action two months later, on 28 December 1916. A letter from a comrade published in the ‘Budget’ in May 1917 told how his battalion ‘left the support line at 5pm, and on the way to the firing-line a shell burst right on top of them, killing poor Con and five others instantly, and severely wounding several others. The place it happened, was on the right of Flers, on the Somme front…’ He was buried in the cemetery at Needles Dump, between Les Beoufs and Flers, but later his remains were exhumed and were re-buried in the Les Beoufs Guards Cemetery, 4½ miles S of Bapaume.
(NAA B2455-3180064)