LANGFORD, Clarence Augustus

Clarence Langford was the son of James Langford and his wife Blanche, nee Pope. He was 23 when he signed up to join the Australian Imperial Force. He was 5' 8" tall, a little above average for the time, a salesman by occupation and a member of the Church of England. He enlisted on 11 December, 1916, when the Gallipoli Campaign was over and the AIF was removing to France and the Western Front.

Langford trained first at Royal Park, from 18 December to 8 January, when he was moved to the Machine Gun Depot at Maribynong. With other recruits, he sailed to England, embarking from Melbourne on on board the HMAT Clan Macgillivray on 10 May, 1917. They landed at Plymouth on 25 July, 1917, and marched in to the 6th Training Battalion at Rollerston on 30 July.

Training over, on 1 January 1918, Clarence Langford took ship from Folkestone to France and marched out to join the 6th Machine Gun Company. On 2 February, the 2nd M.G. Coy. was amalgamated and with three formed a new 6th Machine Gun Company, part of the 2nd Division. This new enlarged company was formed with 64 new Vickers Machine guns,  this weapon served by a crew of three and mounted on a tripod. They were not easy to transport and generally, once mounted, remained in a fixed position during the action. They would be sited to form a flanking fire across a defensive front, forcing the enemy to attack through their line of fire. In attack, they would be sited to provide 'plunging fire' in depths at long range into the enemy ranks. Although protected distance and by barbed wire around the site, their inability to be moved meant that the men who manned them were at great risk.

By October, 1918, the Allies weere engaged in the 100 Days Offensive, a series of attacks by Allied troops starting on August 8 and ending with the Armistice on 11 November, 1918. It was probably during the Battle of the Selle (17 November- 25 October)) that Clarence Langford was severely wounded. On 5 October he sustained gunshot wounds to his abdomen and his right leg; the right thigh was fractured and the femur, the lomgest and strongest bone in the human body, extending from hip to knee, was severed. Clarence Langford was sent first to the 1st Australian General Hospital at Rouen on 6 October and then returned invalided to England  on 23 October. He was to recover from his wounds,and on 5 May, 1919, he was invalided back to Australia on the HMAT Karoola A63. 

On 8 April, 1921, he was discherged from further military service.  He married Annie Hinkley, of Willow Plain, South Australia, in 1932. In 1931, he was working for the Mail Office, at Prahran, Victoria; in 1936 and 1937, he and Annie were at 5 Essex St., Prahran and he identified himsel as a Public Servant. By 1943, he was living at 17 The Avenue, the same address as Victoria Blanche; she was a clerk, he was without work, so it may have been a boarding house. Clarence Langford died on 16 February, 1945. His widow, Annie Langford, lived at 13 Sir William St., Kew, Victoria.