Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Alfred Austin SAVAGE was born on the 25 of August 1894 in Bowden, South Australia. When he enlisted, he was 20 years and 8 months old, he was 5 feet 8 ½ inches tall and weighed 148 pounds. He had fair skin, blue eyes and brown hair and enlisted on the 16th of April 1915. His closest relatives were his parents, Harriet Gillard SAVAGE and William Austin SAVAGE although his father died when Alfred was very young.

SAVAGE worked as an iron worker for 2 years before he enlisted for the war on the 16th of April 1915 and embarked to Heliopolis, Egypt on the 25th of August on board the RMS Morea. The trip to Heliopolis took around 2 months (26th of August to the 10th of October). Conditions on board were very tight with a statistic saying that each person had less than 2m² and 1 dorm/bedroom to 20. SAVAGE, along with approximately 2,000 other people, ate three main meals a day on the boat, usually a small portion of meat and a lot of mash potato.

On the 13th of November 1915, SAVAGE was taken on strength to Gallipoli as part of the 16th infantry battalion. Gallipoli was the biggest battle for the Australians and is still celebrated today as part of the ANZACS and Remembrance Day. Gallipoli was trench warfare and was a long-fought battle but was eventually abandoned because of the great loss of soldiers, although SAVAGE wasn’t there for long as he only spent approximately 50 days on the Gallipoli peninsula before being relocated to Alexandria, yet another Egyptian city.

In Alexandria, he trained as part of the 16th infantry battalion as he and his unit were sent out to Gallipoli from Heliopolis before they were fully trained and prepared for the horrors of war. The reason training was commenced in Egypt is because there wasn’t enough space for that many soldiers and because conditions were very harsh in England with it being winter. Although it was winter in Egypt at the time of SAVAGE being there, the conditions in Egypt weren’t as harsh as England. Training would have been difficult and tough as in Egypt, where they trained, it was very sandy and muddy which caused low mobility and ineffectiveness of training.

After six months of training in Alexandria, SAVAGE embarked for Marseilles on the 1st of June 1916 and disembarked on the 9th of June 1916 and was taken on strength to be part of the 4th Machine Gun Company. In Marseilles there were no major battles, but the battles fought were still significant to the result of the war. SAVAGE was helping protect the lines that the French and English, as well as supporting countries, like Australia, had fought to withhold. There was also a major prisoner camp, full of the triple alliance soldiers, which SAVAGE was shortly about to be very familiar with the realities of.

On the 11th of April 1917 SAVAGE went missing in action in Marseilles, this is because he was taken to Limburg, in Germany and became a prisoner of war. Limburg is located 80km NW of Frankfurt. Most of the prisoners in the Limburg camp were Irish and the majority of the prisoners in the camp were requested to join the German army brigade after the war was finished (to hear more go to personal stores at the bottom of the biography).

On the 9th of December 1918 (around 20 months from when he was captured), SAVAGE, along with many other people, were traded for their own people. The soldiers from the triple alliance were traded for the soldiers of the triple entente, this included SAVAGE. SAVAGE then embarked home to Australia on the 25th of March 1919 through England, Weymouth and London.

After the war SAVAGE returned home to get married to Hilda Rose WAYE, now Hilda Rose SAVAGE.

On the 28th of February 1943 SAVAGE died of unknown causes at the age of 48.

SAVAGE was an ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corporation), SAVAGE held the ANZAC spirit, commonly referred to as the ANZAC legend. The ANZAC legend is that all Australians and New Zealanders share the same characteristics and qualities as one another. Some of these qualities are courage, good humour, ingenuity, mateship, larrikinism, and endurance. To reflect the ANZAC spirit is to show the characteristics of an ANZAC, an instance where he showed true ANZAC spirit is first of all, he signed up to fight for his country, this took courage, although most people didn’t know what war was like, he knew that wasn’t a walk in the park and that he had to put his heart and soul on the line for his country.

Personal Stories

On the 11th of April 1917 SAVAGE went missing in action in Marseilles. SAVAGE was taken to the Limburg, POW camp where he stayed for approximately 20 months.  SAVAGE would have been in a 20x60m wooden cabin with around 400 other people as he was a basic rank in the army (Private). Officers were held in more prestigious places but were not treated any better. The higher the rank the more space and more prestigious area you would be in. the type of cabin SAVAGE would have stayed in would have been called a Mannschaftslager. This type of cabin was for privates, there would have been 3-metre-high barbed wire around the campsite which generally held around 3-4 cabins. Limburg was a generally small campsite as Limburg was a relatively small town in Germany There were roughly 100 war camps for privates alone which were full of British, French, Russians, Australians, Italians etc. Germany had captured approximately 2,400,000 people throughout World War 1. 4,000 of which were Australian. This is about 0.15% of people captured (by Germany). Prisoners of war were treated humanely as it was a rule of war but were fed very rarely and when they were everyone was on high patrol and carefully watched, SAVAGE was most likely fed 3 times a day with most meals most likely being soup with an occasional piece of bread and of course some water as water is necessary.