The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (424) Lance Corporal Ambrose Geoffrey Myall, 2nd Battalion, AIF, First 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 Meredith Duncan, the story for this day was on (424) Lance Corporal Ambrose Geoffrey Myall, 2nd Battalion, AIF, First World War.

Due to technical errors the recording for this Ceremony is not available to the public.

424 Lance Corporal Ambrose Geoffrey Myall, 2nd Battalion, AIF
DOD 11 February 1915
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 27 July 2015

Today we remember and pay tribute to Lance Corporal Ambrose Geoffrey Myall, who died during the First World War.

Originally born in Surrey, England, Lance Corporal Myall was working as a mechanical engineer in a local motor garage in Young, New South Wales, when he enlisted in the AIF, just a few weeks after the declaration of war in August 1914.

Myall was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, and left Sydney in October 1914 on HMAT Suffolk. The 2nd Battalion arrived in Egypt in December and immediately began intensive training. Bayonet practice, musketry, physical drill, and the construction and charging of trenches were the orders of the day. In early April 1915 the battalion left Egypt, bound ultimately for the Gallipoli peninsula.

Myall did not accompany the 2nd Battalion to Gallipoli. In February, while stationed at Mena camp just outside the city of Cairo, he contracted pneumonia. He was admitted to hospital, but succumbed to the disease a few days later. Myall was buried in the British Protestant Cemetery in Cairo. Today this cemetery is known as the Cairo War Memorial Cemetery, and commemorates some 2,000 casualties of the First World War and 340 from the Second World War.

Myall was reported to have been “of quiet disposition” and “a fine type of man”, and his death was reported in the local newspaper as “Young’s First Loss”.

Ambrose Myall’s name is listed on the Roll of Honour to my right, along with the names of more than 60,000 other Australians who died fighting in the First World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Lance Corporal Ambrose Geoffrey Myall, and all those Australians who have given their lives in the service of our nation.

Dr Kate Ariotti
Historian, Military History Section

Sources:
National Archives of Australia, service record, Ambrose Geoffrey Myall.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission website.

“Died in Egypt” Young Witness, 16 February 1915.