MAUGER, Francis Anley
| Service Number: | 3026 |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | 29 April 1915 |
| Last Rank: | Not yet discovered |
| Last Unit: | 28th Infantry Battalion |
| Born: | Saint John, Jersey, Channel Islands, March 1886 |
| Home Town: | Balingup, Donnybrook-Balingup, Western Australia |
| Schooling: | Not yet discovered |
| Occupation: | Farmer |
| Memorials: |
World War 1 Service
| 29 Apr 1915: | Enlisted AIF WW1, 3026 | |
|---|---|---|
| 18 Jan 1916: | Involvement 3026, 28th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '16' embarkation_place: Fremantle embarkation_ship: HMAT Medic embarkation_ship_number: A7 public_note: '' | |
| 18 Jan 1916: | Embarked 3026, 28th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Medic, Fremantle |
"the 28th had ceased to exist as a Battalion."
Private F.A. Mauger wrote:
'In about fifteen minutes the 28th had ceased to exist as a Battalion. We rushed through a machine gun fire that was absolutely terrible. It swept us away by dozens. Men were dropping all over the place, but the others didn’t check. The Germans had a perfect barrier of bursting bombs all along their wire, and in a few minutes it was all over. We never had a chance.’
Blue and White Diamond - 28th Bn AIF Neville Browning
Submitted 8 December 2015 by Steve Larkins
Biography contributed by Elsa Reuter
Born on Jersey, in the Channel Islands, Francis Anley Mauger was working as a farmer at Balingup in Western Australian when he enlisted to serve in World War One, four days after the Gallipoli landings on 29 April 1915.
From May to August he rose quickly to the rank of Sergeant before returning to the rank of Corporal at his own request in November 1915. At the beginning of May 1916, Mauger was taken on strength of the 28th Infantry Battalion, the unit with which he would experience the horrors of warfare on the Western Front during the Battle of Pozieres. Of the experience of the 28th he would write that machine gun fire "swept us away by the dozens".1
Mauger was wounded at Pozieres on 29 July and evacuated to the Norfolk and Norwich War Hospital in England for a shrapnel wound in the left arm. He returned to duty with the No. 1 Command Depot on Salisbury Plain in August 1916, before moving to No. 3 Command Depot in October and, returning to the 28th Infantry Battalion and to France in October 1917.
Mauger returned to Australia in April 1919.
1. F A Mauger reproduced in Neville Browning, The Blue and White Diamond, Australia: Huntingdale, 2002.
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