The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (426598) Flying Officer Adolf David Leon Hoffman, No. 115 Squadron RA, Second World War

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Dennis Stockman, the story for this day was on (426598) Flying Officer Adolf David Leon Hoffman, No. 115 Squadron RA, Second World War.

426598 Flying Officer Adolf David Leon Hoffman, No. 115 Squadron RAF
KIA 25 April 1944
Photograph: P11142.001

Story delivered 6 July 2014

Today we remember and pay tribute to Flying Officer Adolf David Leon Hoffman, whose photograph is displayed today beside the Pool of Reflection.

Adolf Hoffman was born in Melbourne on 24 November 1922, the second son of Charles and Hinda Hoffman. His family moved to Brisbane, where he attended Brisbane Grammar School.

At school Adolf distinguished himself as a prefect and Captain of Griffith House, editor of the school magazine, lieutenant in the Brisbane Grammar School Rifles, and a member of the school committee. He won a number of prizes for essays, including his first one on the Empire’s part in the Great War. He also won prizes for his proficiency in mathematics and “distinguished diligence and good conduct”.

Adolf also excelled in cricket, gymnastics, and athletics. At 15 he won every sprint event in the Queensland Junior Athletics Championship and shattered the State Resident Record for 880 yards. Twice he became the under-16 champion athlete at his school. In his final years of competition, he won the Norman Waraker Memorial Cup, the Victor Sellheim Memorial Trophy, and the Old Boys Association Trophy.

In his final year of school he was awarded the Reginald Heber Roe Memorial Bursary, given to “the boy proceeding from school to university who shall have been most distinguished for scholastic attainments, force of character, and proficiency in the outdoor sports of the School”.

Adolf Hoffman had been enrolled in the Economics Faculty at the University of Queensland for six months when he left his studies to join the RAAF in July 1942. After a period of training at RAAF bases around Australia he received his navigator’s wings in November 1942, passing with distinction, and got his commission four months later. By mid-1943, having travelled via the US and Canada, Pilot Officer Hoffman was in England.

After further training for conversion he was posted to No. 115 Squadron RAF at Witchford, Cambridgeshire. On the evening of 24 April 1944, he took off on a Lancaster heavy bomber, call sign J-Johnny, as part of a bombing mission to Karlsruhe, Germany, with a combined force of 637 Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Mosquitoes. Eighteen of these aircraft failed to return, and J-Johnny was one of them.

Some months later the International Red Cross determined that all seven crew had been killed in action in the early hours of Anzac Day 1944, and were buried in a cemetery in Belgium.

In his last year at Brisbane Grammar School, Adolf Hoffman had written a poem as his own epitaph. Published in the school magazine, it read:

For me no sculptured marble raise
No busts in brass, no names in stone
Write me no books, no faults condone
In lavish words and unguent praise.
Call not my time – “those golden days”,
To be to children, awesome, shown;
Not history's pause, to stand alone,
No passing glory, epic lays.
For I shall tread but once these ways
And go my way and meet my end
My coming shall no portents blaze;
My going shall but few hearts rend;
And this shall be sufficient praise,
“In Duty’s wake he did attend.”

Adolf Hoffman was 20 years old. His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my left, along with nearly 5,500 Australian aircrew to die in Europe during the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of courage and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Flying Officer Adolf David Leon Hoffman, and all of those Australians who have given their lives in service of our nation.