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Auction: 25113 - Orders, Decorations and Medals - e-Auction
Lot: 182

The Great War Bronze Memorial Plaque awarded to Lieutenant W. Corne, 22nd Battalion, Australian Imperial Force who was killed in action in 1917

Great War Bronze Memorial Plaque (William Corne), sold together with a souvenir postcard photograph and a handkerchief inscribed 'To Dear Ivy From Willy', good very fine

William Corne was a native of Norwich who had emigrated to Australia in early 1914, enlisting into the Australian Imperial Force on the outbreak of the Great War. Posted to the 22nd Battalion he entered the war in Gallipoli, leaving Alexandria in March 1915. He continued to serve after the campaign failed and the expeditionary force war evacuated, being commissioned 2nd Lieutenant on 19 September 1916.

Advanced Lieutenant on 1 January 1917 Corne was killed in action on 26 December 1917 although the circumstances around his death are somewhat confused. A number of reports relating to his death exist and several separate narratives emerge from them, the first from a Private Lydanire states:

'when I saw this officer last he was lying stuck on the barbed wire, when we went over in an attack on the Le Sars front. We passed him, but I could not say that he was dead then, if he was not he was certainly badly wounded. We took no ground but had to come back, though we took it afterwards. I did not know this officer well, but ge was very well spoken of.'

Another narrative put forward by Sergeant A. W. Dixon and backed by a Lieutenant Wood suggests he was killed during a raid on Malt Trench, this report states:

'I knew casualty. He was a medium height man, fair complexion, about 30 years of age. Casualty was advancing at Malt Trench near Wallincourt when a machine gun bullet struck Casualty killing him instantly. We heard the next day that a party of Germans had buried his body so our R.S.M. S. Cadwell. H.W. went over to the spot and found his body. I am not quite certain but I believe that he erected a cross over the body.'

Corne was later re-interned and is commemorated upon the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial; sold together with copied research.

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Estimate

Starting price
£40