COWARD, William Aubrey

  1. Service Details
  2. Personal Details
  3. Unit and Rank Details
  4. Fate
  5. Commemoration
  6. Notes
  7. Sources

Service Details

Branch of Service
Army
Conflict
World War I (1914-1918)
Date of Enlistment
01/07/1915
Place of Enlistment
Royal Military College, Duntroon ACT

Personal Details

Gender
Male
Date of Birth
29/05/1894
Place of Birth
Clare, South Australia
Address (at enlistment)
Royal Military College, Duntroon ACT
Occupation
Soldier
Next of Kin
Thomas Coward (father), Clare, South Australia
Burial Place

No known burial place.

Unit and Rank Details

Final Rank
Lieutenant
Final Unit
24 Battalion AIF

Fate

Died (killed in action) on 22 August 1916, Pozières, France aged 22 years

Commemoration

AWM Roll of Honour Memorial Panel 101, Canberra ACT
Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, France
Large stone tablet on outside of northern wall of St. John's Church, Reid ACT

Notes

Coward entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon on 9 March 1913 and graduated on 28 June 1915. He was a South Australian and embarked from Adelaide in November 1915 as a Lieutenant in A Company of the 32nd Battalion. He transferred to the 24th Battalion in Egypt in February 1916 and went with that unit to France in March 1916. After a short period acclimatising to the conditions on the Western Front near Armentières, the 24th Battalion was sent to the Somme and fought at Pozières in late July 1916. According to Bean, after being sent into the battle for the second time a few weeks later, the 24th Battalion was caught in an intense barrage on Pozières Ridge east of Mouquet Farm on 22 August 1916 and Coward was killed. He has no known grave but is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial.

Sources

Charles Bean, 'Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18' (Vol. III, p.806n)
Colonel J.E. Lee, 'Duntroon: The Royal Military College of Australia 1911-1946', 1952
AWM Roll of Honour Database
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)

Create Certificate
William Coward.

William Coward.

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