Private William Huggett, 1st Australian Infantry Battalion

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Villers-Bretonneux Memorial

Australian War Memorial

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William Huggett was born on 1 November 1894 to Stephen and Rosetta Huggett at Braidwood, a small town in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales. Known as “Bill”, he attended the local public school in Braidwood, where his family remained throughout his childhood and teenage years.

Before the outbreak of the First World War, William was working in quarries in south-eastern New South Wales. When the Waratah Recruitment march passed through Kiama on 3 December 1915 on its way to Sydney, Bill was one of the men who joined the march. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 20 December 1915 at the Liverpool Camp in Sydney. He was assigned to the 16th Reinforcements of the 1st Australian Infantry Battalion with the rank of private.

Bill left Sydney in the troopship Makarini on 1 April 1916. Along with other members of the 16th reinforcements for the 1st Battalion – including many fellow Waratahs – Bill arrived at the 1st Australian Division Base Depot on 20 May. At the end of June, he was assigned to the 1st Anzac Entrenching Battalion, and left for Bailleul on the Franco-Belgian border. He spent the next two weeks with the battalion, setting up bivouac shelters for allied soldiers in Belgium.

On 11 July, Bill was one of 37 soldiers dispatched from the Entrenching Battalion as reinforcements for the 1st Australian Infantry Battalion in France. With the other reinforcements, he travelled by train to Vignacourt, and joined the battalion on 12 July. His first – and only – major battle took place just a few days later near the French village of Pozieres as part of the allied fighting in the Somme.

Pozieres and its surrounding ridges offered valuable defensive high ground in the middle of the Somme. At the start of July the area was held by the Germans. Initial attempts by the British army to capture the village failed. As a result, a major allied offensive was launched on the village and surrounds on 23 July 1916. Over the next 42 days, the allies made 19 separate attacks against German positions, ultimately capturing the village. That success came at a cost – Australian casualties after the battle numbered 23,000; 5,285 of these casualties came from the 1st Australian Division in the first five days of fighting.

Among these early casualties was Private William Huggett. Sometime between 23 and 25 July, Bill was killed in action while attempting to capture enemy positions around Pozieres. In the chaos of fighting, his final moments were not recorded. 

Fellow Waratah volunteer, Private Ernest Lucas, wrote home to Kiama after the first attack, telling his sister that “Poor … Bill Huggett got killed” in the fighting. Sympathy poured in to Bill’s family and friends in both Kiama and Braidwood, with several articles in the local papers expressing sadness at his death.

William Huggett was 21 years old.

His body was buried in the vicinity of Pozieres following the fighting, but his grave was lost, and the body never recovered. He is commemorated at the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, among more than 10,000 Australians who were killed while fighting in France and have no known grave.

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