SERVICE PERSON RESEARCH
SERVICE PERSON DETAILS
Service Person’s
Name
Nevill Montague Little
Rank
Second Lieutenant
Service Number
182
Regiment/Unit or
Ship or Squadron
5th Australian Light Horse Regiment – C squadron (2nd Light Horse Brigade)
49th Australian Infantry Battalion
Date of Birth
21 September 1892
Place of Birth
Toowoomba, Queensland
Family Details
Single
Father: Frank Montague Boyle Little
Mother: Eleanor Mary Little
Grandfather was Robert Little, first Crown Solicitor for Queensland
Age at Enlistment
22
Place of Enlistment
Brisbane
Date of Death
3 September 1916
Place of Death
Mouquet Farm, France
Cemetery or
Memorial Name
Villers-Bretonneux Memorial (listed with 49th Battalion)
PHOTO:
Source: The Roll of Honour 1916, The Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld: 1866 - 1939), p. 23. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article23609861
(accessed 14 February, 2015)
Source: Museum Victoria, Photograph album of Trooper G S Millar,
http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/1565064/photograph-n-little-ford-egypt-trooper-g-s-millar-world-war-i-19141915
SERVICE PERSON’S STORY/EULOGY:
Prepared by Max Kirsch
Today we commemorate Second Lieutenant Nevill Montague Little who was serving in the 49th Australian
Infantry Battalion at the time of his death at the Battle of Mouquet Farm, some 30 kilometres from this
spot.
Nevill Little was born on 21 September 1892 in Toowoomba to Frank and Eleanor Little. He was educated
at Brisbane Boys’ College and became a jackaroo in Blackall.
Just two days after war was declared Little wrote to his parents, “There is great excitement about the war
here; we are all dying to get away to it. We chased an emu yesterday and now we have all got feathers in
our hats.” Nevill Little enlisted in Brisbane on 5 October 1914 and joined the 5th Australian Light Horse
Regiment as a Private.
The Regiment departed from Brisbane on HMAT Persic to Egypt on 21 December 1914.
The original assault on Gallipoli in April 1915 had consisted of all infantry possible. Due to the enormous
amount of casualties and wounded who had to be sent back to Egypt, mounted troops, such as the 5th Light
Horse Regiment, had to be used as infantry. They left Egypt on 19 May and disembarked at Anzac Cove on
20 May 1915.
Little was injured at Gallipoli by a bullet wound on 16 June 1915 and was taken back to Egypt to be treated.
A newspaper article, written by one of his mates in July 1916, describes how Little had slept outside of a
trench one night and had woken at midnight to find he had been hit by a stray bullet in the thigh. Little rejoined his unit on 6 August but was hospitalised in Alexandria during November that year with high fevers.
He re-joined his Regiment again in December 1915. By this time the regiment had withdrawn from
Gallipoli and was back in Egypt.
On 26 March 1916, Nevill Little transferred from the 5th Light Horse Regiment to the 49th Infantry Battalion
whence he was promoted to Second Lieutenant. The 49th Battalion arrived at Marseilles after joining the
British Expeditionary Force on 12 June 1916.
Mouquet Farm was a strategic placement on the Pozieres Ridge that the English commanders wanted to
control so that they would be placed behind the German fortress of Thiepval. On 3 September 1916, the
49th Battalion was commanded to attack on the right side of the ‘Fabeck Graben’ or ‘High Trench’. They did
this with much difficulty but held that part of the trench. The 51st and 52nd Battalions took Mouquet Farm
but were counter-attacked fiercely and nearly all of them died. The Germans pushed south back to the
ground held by the 49th and the last remnants of the 52nd Battalion.
Eventually, the Canadian 16th Battalion was sent to strengthen and relieve the Australians. This was the
official ending of the Australian campaign at Pozieres. Second Lieutenant Nevill Montague Little died that
day, 3 September 1916, in the Battle of Mouquet Farm. There was no grave and his name is recorded here
on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial.
Little’s name appears as the centre-piece of a memorial plaque in the chapel at Brisbane Boys’ College and
he, along with the other fallen soldiers of my school, is remembered each year at our school Anzac Day
service.
Nevill Montague Little: Rest in Peace.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Australian Light Horse Studies Centre, 5th Australian Light Horse Regiment, http://alhresearch.tripod.com/Light_Horse/index.blog/1861889/5th-australian-light-horse-regiment-aif-history/
(accessed 13 January 2015)
Australian War Memorial 2015, Collection http://www.awm.gov.au/search/all/?op=Search&format=list
(accessed 10 February 2015)
Australian War Memorial 2015, First World War Embarkation Rolls – Nevill Montague Little
http://www.awm.gov.au/people/rolls/R2030889/ (accessed 17 December 2014)
Australian War Memorial 2015, War diaries – 5th Light Horse Regiment
http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/AWM4/10/10/5/(accessed 13 February 2015)
Bean, Charles Edwin Woodrow (C E W), 1941, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 (Volume
III – The Australian Imperial Force in France, 1916 (12th edition, 1941)
http://www.awm.gov.au/histories/first_world_war/AWMOHWW1/AIF/Vol3 /
(accessed 10 February 2015)
Department of Veterans Affairs 2001, Australians at War – The Battle for Mouquet Farm,
http://www.australiansatwar.gov.au/stories/stories_war=W1_id=181.html (accessed 13 January 2015)
Hamilton, John, 2008, Gallipoli Sniper, Pan Australia.
Museum Victoria, Photograph album of Trooper G S Millar,
http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/407600/photograph-album-trooper-george-simpsonmillar-5th-australian-light-horse-egypt-1915 (accessed 17 December 2014)
National Archives of Australia, Discovering Anzacs – Nevill Montague Little
http://discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au/browse/records/277237 (accessed 17 December 2014)
Queensland War Memorial Register 2015, Blackall War Memorial,
http://www.qldwarmemorials.com.au/memorial/?id=213 (accessed 10 February 2015)
The Brisbane Courier 1916, PERSONAL NOTES (1916, April 15)-The Brisbane Courier (Qld.: 1864 - 1933), p. 6.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article20135573 (accessed 14 February 2015)
The Brisbane Courier 1916, PERSONAL NOTES. (1916, September 28). The Brisbane Courier (Qld.: 1864 1933), p. 9. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article20116306 (accessed 14 February 2015)
The Brisbane Courier 1916, WITH OUR BOYS (1915, July 29). The Brisbane Courier (Qld.: 1864 - 1933), p. 9.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article20017080 (accessed 4 February 2015)
The Queenslander 1916, The Roll of Honour October 14 - (Brisbane, Qld.: 1866 - 1939), p. 23,
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article23609861 (accessed 14 February 2015)
University of New South Wales, Canberra, The AIF Project – Nevill Montague Little
https://www.aif.adfa.edu.au/showPerson?pid=177696 (accessed 17 December 2014)
Wilson, L.C. and Wetherell, H. 1926, History of the Fifth Light Horse Regiment, 1914 - 1919. Motor Press,
Sydney
Wray, Christopher, 2015, Pozieres: Echoes of a Distant Battle, Cambridge University Press.