The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (972) Corporal William Alexander Young, 27th Battalion, First World War.

Places
Accession Number AWM2017.1.121
Collection type Film
Object type Last Post film
Physical description 16:9
Maker Australian War Memorial
Place made Australia: Australian Capital Territory, Canberra, Campbell
Date made 01 May 2017
Access Open
Conflict First World War, 1914-1918
Copyright Item copyright: © Australian War Memorial
Creative Commons License This item is licensed under CC BY-NC
Copying Provisions Copyright restrictions apply. Only personal, non-commercial, research and study use permitted. Permission of copyright holder required for any commercial use and/or reproduction.
Description

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Craig Berelle, the story for this day was on (972) Corporal William Alexander Young, 27th Battalion, First World War.

Film order form
Speech transcript

972 Corporal William Alexander Young, 27th Battalion
KIA 4 August 1916

Story delivered 1 May 2017

Today we remember and pay tribute to Corporal William Alexander Young.

William Young was born on 21 May 1890 to James and Alice Young. He grew up in Port Adelaide, where he attended the local school. Young lost his parents before he turned ten, and was brought up by his aunt, Mrs Inglis, in nearby Exeter. He went on to work as a clerk.

William Young enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in February 1915. He was posted to the newly-raised 27th Battalion and left Australia for active service overseas at the end of May. The 27th Battalion spent two months training in Egypt before arriving on Gallipoli on the 12th of September. It seems that Young was left in Egypt, where he was promoted to temporary corporal and eventually made storeman in charge of kit bags. A small act of disobedience later saw him revert to the rank of private, but he was later promoted to corporal again.

Young rejoined the 27th Battalion in January 1916 following the evacuation from Gallipoli. He travelled with them to France in March 1916. Some four months later the 27th Battalion took part in its first major operation on the Western Front near the French village of Pozières. On 4 August 1916 the 27th Battalion attacked two strongly-held German trenches, known as OG 1 and OG 2, to the north-east of the village. The battalion was able to capture the trenches, together with a heavily fortified windmill held by the Germans, repulsing a number of strong counter-attacks.

Today the location of the windmill is an Australian memorial which, in the words of Charles Bean, marks a ridge “more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth”. One of the 23,000 men killed, wounded or missing was Corporal William Alexander Young.

Young remained on the official missing lists for months. Investigations revealed a large number of conflicting accounts of his fate, from him being in England with a broken leg, to him being alive and well and in charge of stretcher bearers in November 1916. Some said they saw him killed at Pozières, others that he wasn’t killed until four months later. Some informants confused Corporal Young with a sergeant of a similar name in the 27th Battalion, making it harder still to Corporal Young’s fate.

About a year after he first went missing, Corporal Young’s aunt, Mrs Inglis, received formal notification that military authorities had determined that William Alexander Young had been killed in action on 4 August 1916.

His body was never recovered, and today he is commemorated on the memorial to the missing at Villers-Bretonneux. William Young was 26 years old.
His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among more than 60,000 Australians who died while serving in the First World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Corporal William Alexander Young, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Meleah Hampton
Historian, Military History Unit

  • Video of The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (972) Corporal William Alexander Young, 27th Battalion, First World War. (video)