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)