#2434 Sapper William Arthur Stirling
14TH FIELD COMPANY, AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERS
TWENTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD WILLIAM STIRLING WAS A carpenter from Waverley, a suburb of Sydney. He had enlisted in September 1915 and, unsurprisingly given his skill-set, was sent to join a company of the Australian Engineers. Having initially served in Egypt, William embarked for Marseilles with his company in June 1916 and made his way towards the Somme as the summer progressed.
Sapper William Stirling. (Australian National War Memorial)
Given the condition of the trenches and the deterioration of the battlefield by November, William’s work was never done. At the beginning of the month he and his fellow sappers had been sent to ‘rest’ at the transport lines, but had in reality been working with parties of infantry sent to them to construct assembly trenches and making general preparations to give the attacking troops at least a chance of success when they went forward on 5th November. Their own infantry were relieved from the lines mid-morning on the 3rd, but there was to be no such release for the sappers. William and his companions were to remain where they were, supporting the new Australian arrivals through the battle.
The night before the battle, in the wind and rain, William was sent out to peg overland tracks, so that anyone making their way up to the front line would not lose their way. The attack duly went off at 9:10am on the 5th, the sappers waiting in a sunken road as their countrymen advanced on the right of the Durham Light Infantry. While they fought forward north of Flers, William remained near brigade headquarters in case he was needed. As the light began to fade, the four sections of William’s company were ordered up to the flanks of the Australian line to help form a trench back to the original positions. It had been reported that the centre of the line was firm, held by the Australian troops, but this was not the case and the sections became confused. On one flank they simply returned, on the other they found some Australian bombers in an outpost partially linked back to the front line. By the time the sections returned to headquarters at lunchtime the following day and the sector handed over to a new company of sappers, William had been killed in action. In just sixteen days the 14th Field Company of the Australian Engineers had suffered twenty-nine casualties.
The Australian Memorial at Villers-Brettoneux. (Andrew Holmes)
William was buried in one of a number of scattered graves throughout the area south of the road between Flers and Eaucourt l’Abbaye. These graves were later lost and 25-year-old William Stirling’s body, if rediscovered, was never identified. He is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial.