CORPORAL WILLIAM JOHN SAVAGE
27TH BN AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
3RD OCTOBER 1918 AGE 25
BURIED: BELLICOURT BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE
William Savage was a 25 year old labourer from Port Adelaide, South Australia who enlisted when the 27th Battalion was formed there in March 1915. The Battalion went to Gallipoli in September 1915 and then to France early in 1916. Savage was killed in their final action of the war, the attempt to break the Beaurevoir Line, Germany's last line of defence, the last strand of the Hindenburg Line. The fighting was ferocious despite the fact, or maybe because of the fact, that the end for Germany was so near. Savage was killed on the 3rd and the line was finally broken late on the evening of the 5th. With the Hindenburg Line breached, the high ground behind it captured, the ground before the Allies now lay open before them.
The war was virtually over but Mrs Savage's 'darling' was dead. I love these simple, unsophisticated inscriptions, they are so eloquent. The War Grave Commission's records indicate that both William Savage's parents were still alive but it is as his mother's darling that he is commemorated.