Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

The Biography Of William Austin SAVAGE

William had applied to enlist in the army when he was 18 on the 17th of January in 1916. At the time he was a carpenter and he was single. He is also part of the Church of England and there are quite a few churches he might of went to in Adelaide. He embarked on the 13th of July in 1916. When he arrived, he had been assigned to the 48th Infantry Battalion.

His battalion was located in France. Australia was fighting in the battle because they wanted to help the mother country. They had a close relationship to Britain so they decided to help in the war. Also, a big reason why they went to help is that if Britain had lost, then many people thought that Australia would become a German colony. This is a reason why William might have decided to enlist.

The first battle William's unit was involved in was the battle of Pozieres. The battle of Pozieres was a battle of deadly and costly fire. Against the Germans, the Battalions involved had tried many times to take over the town and finally on the 7th of August 1916 Germany had their last attempt of taking it over with deadly fire and were not successful so they did not try again. There had been thousands of casualties over the month that the battle had gone on for. William was involved with his unit in the battle of Bullecourt. This battle consisted of 2 weeks of trench ware fair and with 2250 casualties they had won the battle.

On the 26th of June in 1917, he had disembarked out of France and had gone to the service that he would have been in for the rest of the war. The service that he was allocated too was the 4th Broad Gauge Railway Operating Company. It is not known exactly what he did in the 4th Broad Gauge Railway Operating Company but there are some duties that he might have done and information about what railways companies did in the first world war. His role in the railway service was to work as an engineer in a railway company. Railway companies would have built railways and transported armies. Railways had the capacity of transporting large armies and millions of artillery shells for years on end. Railways and artilleries are the two aspects that had shaped world war 1. Soon after joining the railway company William had achieved the Sapper rank. Sappers were engineers who would have worked on constructions of railways in the first world war. Unfortunately, he was also once absent from duty without permission for 5 hours on the 3rd of November in 1918.

By the end of the war, William had achieved a total of 2 medals. The medals that he got were the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. Victory medal had been awarded to him since it was awarded to everyone who helped in the war to commemorate the victory of the war. The British war medal was given to him to mark the end of World War 1.  

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. Some of the qualities of being ANZAC are endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour and mateship. The Anzac spirit is the soldiers that had fought in the war. The Anzac spirit is the endurance that the soldiers had, courage that the soldiers needed to fight, ingenuity so they can be clever, good humour to be happy even in tough times and mateship to support each other in the war. William had shown the Anzac spirit by first of all joining the war. It takes a lot of courage to go ahead and enlist to be in the war which you don’t even know if you are going to make it out alive. The Second reason he showed the Anzac spirit is the endurance he had while fighting in battles as he must have kept on going. The final way William must have shown the Anzac spirit was by showing ingenuity by being smart out on the battlefield and making good choices throughout the war.

On a sadder note, at the age of 85, in 1983, William Austin Savage sadly passed away.