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=William George Vincent Williams (first Australian casualty of the Great War)=

Death
Williams was the first Australian serviceman to be killed in the Great War.

He had served five years in the Naval Reserve and had just a week left to serve when war was declared and he was commanded into full service.

Williams was as part of a raiding party from H.M.A.S. Una that disembarked near Rabaul, New Britain (an island to the north-east of New Guinea), to destroy a German radio station operating some five miles inland.

The advance section came across a group of natives in a coconut plantation on the Bita Paka Road.

Williams covered another sailor, Stoker Kember, who returned with the information that they were just gathering coconuts, but after the pair advanced about ten yards, Williams was shot in the stomach by German soldiers hiding in the plantation huts. The group’s medical officer, Captain Brian Pockley (pictured right, the son of a highly qualified surgeon in Macquarie Street in Sydney and himself a highly regarded Rugby Union player and all-round athlete) after hearing Williams had been wounded went to his aid, and after applying what first-aid that the conditions allowed, gave his Red Cross armband to Kember to carry Williams to the rear.

No longer under the nominal protection that the Red Cross gave, Pockley was shot shortly after. Williams and Pockley were later picked up by a party with an ambulance cart and taken back to H.M.A.S. Berrima, one of the ships that had carried the Australian force to Rabaul and they both died on board that afternoon, Williams about an hour before Pockley.

Six Australians were killed and four wounded in the battle of Bita Paka, and Pockley became the first Australian commissioned officer to die in the First World War.

With Williams serving in the Navy, no embarkation record was required and there is no attestation paper. His transfer to full service was so sudden that according to The Argus, his mother and sister had no direct contact with him before he was killed – the only indication of his whereabouts being a letter to a friend in Northcote in which Williams apologised for not keeping an appointment, adding "he would be glad to get ashore and have a jolly good feed".

Civilian Life
His parents were married in Brighton, England in 1884 and migrated to Australia almost immediately. Williams senior later died (date unknown) and his mother re-married, to Joseph Victor Robinson at Castlemaine in 1906.

Both The Age and The Argus gave Williams address as 36 Beavers Road and therein lies a mystery – the property was for several years in directories (unnumbered in many cases) listed under the name of Joseph V. Boundy, seemingly a combination of Mrs Robinson’s original maiden name and her second husband's given names.

Williams was noted as being well known around the area, and a prominent member of the Loyal Orange Lodge and Richmond Rifle Club.

Just before the action, The Argus published a list of around 100 men heading into action with the Navy's New Guinea Expeditionary Force and for a town some little way inland, the Northcote district remarkably provided five of the group.

As well as Williams, the other four were : Midshipman (later Lieutenant) Charles William Hicks (11 Mitchell Street, Northcote), Ordinary Seaman William Nathaneal Gothard (c/- Mr. Jenkins, Fairfield), Able Bodied Seaman Rupert Leslie Burne, ("Roseville", Speight Street, Northcote) and A.B.S. William Robert Hartwell (c-o Parsons, Brooke Street, Westgarth).

Resting Place
The graves of Able Seaman W G V Williams (left) and Captain Brian Colden Antill Pockley, Australian Army Medical Corps. ref>Australian War Memorial, Image Id J00186

In the back row, right, is the grave of AB Henry William Street, killed in action on 11 September 1914 (buried on the road where he was killed).

The iron railing fence around the grave of Captain Pockley was provided by a family member. The original burial place of Pockley, Williams and Street was at Herbertshohe, reinterred in another cemetery at Herberthohe around c 1915-1916 and in 1919 they were reinterred in the Rabaul military cemetery. Note: Postwar c 1950 these three graves were transferred to Bita Paka War Cemetery.