William Joseph Coppock
Service no: 2127
Place of birth: Cargo, 1893
Address: Stabback Street, Millthorpe
Occupation: Horse trainer
Next of kin: Mary Coppock (mother), Stabback Street, Millthorpe, later Manildra
Date of enlistment: 5 July 1915
Place of enlistment: Liverpool
Age at enlistment: 22
Fate: Embarked HMAT A8 "Argyllshire", Sydney, 30 September 1915.
Admitted to 2nd Auxiliary Hospital, Cairo, with an injured foot, 27 December 1915.
Proceeded to France March 1916.
Wounded in action 29 July 1916.
Transferred to England for treatment and convalescence.
Re-joined unit, France,28 March 1917.
Killed in action during battle of Lagnicourt, 15 April 1917.
Date of death: 15 April 1917
William Joseph Coppock was born in Cargo in 1893; he was the eldest child and only son of William Henry and Mary Ann Coppock (nee Burrell). After attending school in Orange, he was apprenticed to Edward (Ted) Lawler, horse trainer, and followed that occupation.
When William enlisted at Liverpool on 5 July 1915, he nominated his mother was as his next of kin, his father having died in 1908.
On 30 September 1915 William embarked at Sydney. On 27 December 1915 he was hospitalised with an injured foot in Cairo.
William proceeded to France in March 1916. On 29 July 1916 he was wounded during the Pozieres offensive and was transferred to England for treatment and convalescence. William rejoined his unit in France on 28 March 1917. The following month he was killed in action during the Battle of Lagnicourt.
The Leader of 12 April 1918 reports the letters of condolence received by his mother from fellow soldiers. [https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/100961814/10546671]
There is no known grave for Private William Coppock. He is remembered on the Orange East Public School Honour Roll, on the World War I Roll of Honour on the southern face of the Orange Cenotaph, on panel number 82 on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and at the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in France.
He is also remembered in Newman Park in Orange, where his name appears on a plaque commemorating former Orange East Public School students who were killed in action.
In July 1917 a tree was planted at Orange Public School in William's memory. It was one of 26 trees planted in honour of fallen soldiers who had attended the school. [http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/117829909]
*Sharon Jameson and Margaret Nugent, January 2019
