Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of Henry and Mary WEBB

Staff Sergeant Alcon Benjamin Webb, son of Mary and Alcon Webb, of Dawson Street, Lismore was born at Palmer's Island, Clarence River, and educated at Penrith and Clarence River.  He is 38 years of age, and after his enlistment was in charge of No. 2 Isolated Ward at Liverpool for a while.  Later he was sent to Rabaul, where he had charge of No. 1 Isolated Ward, also the village of Matupi.  He was on the staff at Naminula Hospital, all in connection with the Army Medical Corps, with which he was identified the whole time he was with the Militiary forces. His mother received a very nice letter from Sir Samuel Pethybridge, the late Adminsitrator at Rabaul, in which he expressed his regret at the loss of Staff Sergeant Webb, through the disaperance of the Matunga, and also state that he had been extremely well through of, and had made himslef very useful over there.  

Australia’s Fighting Sons of the Empire – Portraits and Biographies of Australian in the Great War, B. Jackson & Co, 83 Pitt Street, Sydney, Page 30. (nla.gov.au)

Amongst the many Lower Clarence men who took part in the great war, few have had such a varied and interesting career as Staff Sgt. Ben A Webb.  Ben spent most of his life on the Lower and Middle Clarence, having been an assistant in stores at Lawrence and Yamba, and a well known figure in social movements at thos places.

Having a taste for chemisty, he stutdied a little in his sapre time, under the direction of Dr. Caldwell at maclean, and about two years before the outbreak of war, wet to Sydney to follow up his studies.  When the war started, he was amongst the first to offer his services for the medical corps, and in that branch accompanied the expedition which captured Rabaul, remaining there on medical duty with the garrison.  After coming to Sydney in charge of a party of invalids, he was returning to Rabaul on the Matunga, when that vessel was captured by the German raider Wolf.  Of his subsequent experiences, a writer in a recent issue of the Sydney Bulletin says:-

I salute a dinkum Digger - Staff Sgt. Alcon B webb, R.A.A.M.C.  He was aboard the Matunga, en reoute to Rabaul, when she was sunk by the Wolf, was taken aboard the raider, and was aprisoner there until her arrival in Germany seven months later.  During those seven months, he worked devotedly among the sick in the foetid prison-holds of the Wolf.  He sweated his way through outbreaks of typhus and beri-beri in the Indian Ocean, he tended Japanese and niggers, finally running himself almost to a stand still during the scurvy outbreak which ended the chapter of the Wolf's medical horrors.  While the raider was making her final dash through the British patrols, Webb was busy down below keeping heart and life in the miserable wrecks of humanity whom the horrible disease was rotting alive, and this while he himself was going through a series of bad attacks of malara.  - Richmond River Express and Casino Kyolge Advertiser Friday 18 July 1919 page 6 (nla.gov.au)

WEBB-The Relatives and friends of the late LIEUT ALCON BENJAMIN WEBB (CON) late of A.M.C., A.I.F. and St John's Park Canley Vale are Invited to attend his Funeral to leave  Wood Coffill's Mortuary Chapel 810 George street city THIS SATURDAY at 1.15 p m for the Crematorium Rookwood by road 
WOOD COFFILL LIMITED
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