63789
SAVAGE, William Austin
| Service Number: | 1981 |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | Not yet discovered |
| Last Rank: | Private |
| Last Unit: | 4th Broad Gauge Railway Operating Company |
| Born: | Maylands, South Australia, Australia, 1898 |
| Home Town: | Norwood (SA), South Australia |
| Schooling: | Not yet discovered |
| Occupation: | Carpenter |
| Died: | 25 November 1983, cause of death not yet discovered, place of death not yet discovered |
| Cemetery: | Not yet discovered |
| Memorials: | Norwood Primary School Honour Board, Norwood St Bartholomew's Anglican Church Honour Roll |
World War 1 Service
| 1 Apr 1916: | Transferred AIF WW1, Private, 48th Infantry Battalion, He was put in to the 48th Infantry Battalion. | |
|---|---|---|
| 13 Jul 1916: | Involvement Private, 1981, 48th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '19' embarkation_place: Adelaide embarkation_ship: HMAT Seang Bee embarkation_ship_number: A48 public_note: '' | |
| 13 Jul 1916: | Embarked Private, 1981, 48th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Seang Bee, Adelaide | |
| 26 Jun 1917: | Transferred AIF WW1, Private, 4th Broad Gauge Railway Operating Company, Had been Transferred to the 4th Broad Gauge Railway Operating Company. | |
| 13 Sep 1918: | Promoted AIF WW1, Sapper, 4th Broad Gauge Railway Operating Company, Promoted to rank Sapper. | |
| 11 Nov 1918: | Involvement Private, 1981 |
Help us honour William Austin Savage's service by contributing information, stories, and images so that they can be preserved for future generations.
Add my storyBiography contributed by St Ignatius' College
William had applied to enlist in the army when he was 18 on the 17th of January in 1916. At the time he was a carpenter and he was single. He is also part of the Church of England. He embarked on the 13th of July in 1916. When he arrived, he had been assigned to the 48th Infantry Battalion.
The first battle William's unit was involved in was the battle of Pozieres. The battle of Pozieres was a battle of deadly and costly fire. Against the Germans, the Battalions involved had tried many times to take over the town and finally on the 7th of August 1916 Germany had their last attempt of taking it over and were not successful so they did not try again. There had been thousands of casualties over the month that the battle had gone on for.
William was involved with his unit in the battle of Bullecourt. This battle consisted of 2 weeks of trench warfare and with 2250 casualties they had won the battle.
On the 26th of June in 1917, he had disembarked out of France and had gone to the service that he would have been in for the rest of the war. The service that he was allocated too was the 4th Broad Gauge Railway Operating Company. It is not known exactly what he did in the 4th Broad Gauge Railway Operating Company but there are some duties that he might have done and information about what railways companies did in the First World War. His role in the railway service was to work as an engineer in a railway company. Railway companies would have built railways and transported armies. Railways had the capacity of transporting large armies and millions of artillery shells for years on end. Railways and artilleries are the two aspects that had shaped world war 1. Soon after joining the railway company William had achieved the Sapper rank. Sappers were engineers who would have worked on constructions of railways in the first world war. Unfortunately, he was also once absent from duty without permission for 5 hours on the 3rd of November in 1918.
By the end of the war, William had achieved a total of 2 medals. The medals that he got were the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. Victory medal had been awarded to him since it was awarded to everyone who helped in the war to commemorate the victory of the war. The British war medal was given to him to mark the end of World War 1.
On a sadder note, at the age of 85, in 1983, William Austin Savage sadly passed away.
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