MALLYON, Alfred Kingworth
Service Number: | 1697 |
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Enlisted: | 14 March 1916 |
Last Rank: | Private |
Last Unit: | 48th Infantry Battalion |
Born: | Port Pirie, South Australia, 17 January 1896 |
Home Town: | Port Pirie, Port Pirie City and Dists, South Australia |
Schooling: | Not yet discovered |
Occupation: | Farmer |
Died: | Killed in Action, France, 3 May 1918, aged 22 years |
Cemetery: |
Adelaide Cemetery Villers-Bretonneux, France Plot III, Row K, Grave I, Villers-Bretonneux, France |
Memorials: | Adelaide National War Memorial, Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, Loxton and District Great War Roll of Honor, North Adelaide Christ Church School Honour Board, North Adelaide Queens School Honour Board |
World War 1 Service
11 Apr 1915: | Involvement Private, 1697, 48th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '19' embarkation_place: Adelaide embarkation_ship: HMAT Aeneas embarkation_ship_number: A60 public_note: '' | |
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11 Apr 1915: | Embarked Private, 1697, 48th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Aeneas, Adelaide | |
14 Mar 1916: | Enlisted AIF WW1 |
Adelaide Cemetery -Villers-Bretonneux, France
Villers-Bretonneux, France became famous in 1918, when the German advance on Amiens ended in the capture of the village by their tanks and infantry on 23 April. On the following day, the 4th and 5th Australian Divisions, with units of the 8th and 18th Divisions, recaptured the whole of the village and on the 8th of August 1918, the 2nd and 5th Australian Divisions advanced from its eastern outskirts in the Battle of Amiens.
Adelaide Cemetery was begun early in June 1918 and used by the 2nd and 3rd Australian Divisions. It continued in use until the Allies began their advance in mid-August. After the Armistice a large number of graves were brought into the cemetery from small graveyards and isolated positions on the north, west and south of Villers-Bretonneux and they were, without exception, those of men who died in the months from March to September 1918.
Private Alfred Kingsnorth Mallyon, Service Number 1697, of Port Pirie was one of those graves. A signaller with the 48th Battalion, he was going over the top with 3 of 4 other men attacking Monument Wood in front of Villers-Bretonneux when on the 3rd May 1918 at about 2am a shell fell in their midst and killed him. He just shouted “Im hit, and turned over on his face and died.” said signaller E. Lawrence. The same shell killed Captain Cumming. His headstone bears the most unusual inscription: ‘I must go, I am ashamed to be seen without a soldier's uniform.’
There are 960 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 522 are Australians, 266 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to four casualties known, or believed to be buried among them.
Submitted 28 May 2020 by Gary Fradd