When bank manager Cecil Mills applied for a commission in Australia’s military forces, he stated that he had an ordinary public-school education and that he was born on 15 October 1881. Thus Mills would have attended Auburn Public School during some of the school’s very earliest years. Immediately prior to his commissioning on 16 September 1915, Cecil Mills was the manager of the E S & A Bank branch at Ascot Vale in Victoria but it is clear that his childhood and youth had been spent in New South Wales for he declared previous military service in militia units in New South Wales and he stated that he had served two years as an apprentice at a Sydney company.
Lieutenant Mills embarked on the Ulysses on 27 October 1915 and it appears that his wife, Effie Sara Mills, and at least one child, John Burne Mills, moved to live with Effie’s parents in Waverley in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. All official mail to Mrs Mills was addressed C/- Dr A Burne, Dalley Street, Waverley.
Lieutenant Mills was too late for Gallipoli but he was awarded the 1914-1915 Star for he disembarked in Egypt before 31 December 1915. He was allocated to the 23rd Battalion and he moved off with them to the Western Front, arriving at the French port city of Marseilles on 30 March 1916. The troops were taken by train to the nursery sector in the far north of France but after several months there they were brought back down to the Somme to join in the First Battle of the Somme that had been launched by British forces on 1 July 1916.
Lieutenant Mills was killed in action in the first few days of the savage fighting at the tiny French village of Pozières. His body was never found so his name was inscribed on the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux when that monument was unveiled in 1938. Mrs Mills was allocated a widow’s pension (officer) of £3/10/- p.f. and an allowance of £1 p.f. for her son. It appears that Mrs Mills never remarried for documents indicate that Effie Sarah Mills planned to travel to the UK in 1957.
Cecil Mills is honoured on the following memorials in Australia
Waverley Soldiers War Memorial
Glenbrook First World War Roll of Honour
Blaxland & Glenbrook District War Memorial
English Scottish and Australian Bank Great War Roll of Honour
Auburn Public School First World War Honour Roll
Auburn Old Boys Public School Great War Honour Roll
Roll of Honour Australian War Memorial Canberra