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Temporary Lieutenant William Thomas Dartnell

Unit: 25th (Service) Battalion (Frontiersmen), the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment)
Action: 3 September 1915, near Maktau, British East Africa (now Kenya)
Dartnell, 30, was part of the British, Indian and African forces stationed in East Africa and was wounded in the leg when his mounted infantry patrol was ambushed.
The citation says: ``It was found impossible to get the more severely wounded away. Lieutenant Dartnell, who was himself being carried away wounded in the leg, seeing the situation, and knowing that the enemy's black troops murdered the wounded, insisted on being left behind in the hope of being able to save the lives of the other wounded men. He gave his own life in the gallant attempt to save others.''

Biography: Dartnell was only 15 when he first experienced the perils of war.
He was born in Collingwood, Melbourne, on 6 April 1885 and enlisted in the Victorian Mounted Rifles where he served in the Boer War for a year.
He returned to Melbourne and married, and worked as an actor. He returned to South Africa about 1912 and was in East London, working for the Standard Printing Company, in 1914 when the war began.

He convened a meeting of Australians living in East London when the war broke out, and as chair of the meeting cabled the British War Office a list of names, with his at the top, of Australians offering their services.

He went to England and joined the Royal Fusiliers using his professional name Wilbur Taylor Dartnell and was soon sent back to Africa.

On June 22, Dartnell led a group of men who raided the German fort at Bukoba and was mentioned in dispatches. He is buried in Kenya, and was survived by his wife and daughter.