The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (2108) Lance Corporal Robert Alex Bolton-Wood, 13th 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 Richard Cruise, the story for this day was on (2108) Lance Corporal Robert Alex Bolton-Wood, 13th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

2108 Lance Corporal Robert Alex Bolton-Wood, 13th Battalion, AIF
KIA 29 August 1916
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 29 August 2016

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Robert Alex Bolton-Wood.

Robert Bolton-Wood, known as “Lex”, was born in 1893, the eldest of Alexander and May Bolton-Wood’s four sons. His youngest brother, Frederick, lived for only a few months. The other three boys grew up in Dulwich Hill and attended Fort Street High School. In 1905 Robert’s father, a dentist from Glebe, was obliged by the courts to pay maintenance for an illegitimate son, and the following year he died and the family moved to North Sydney. After completing school, Robert joined the staff of the Government Savings Bank as a clerk, and by 1914 was working at the Newtown branch.

All three of the Bolton-Wood brothers enlisted for service in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War. The first was the youngest, Eric, who enlisted in November 1914 and ended up serving in the Camel Corps in the Middle East until 1918. Robert enlisted in February 1915 and was posted to the 13th Battalion, and Albert applied for and was granted a commission in June of the same year.

Private Robert Bolton-Wood underwent a period of training in Australia before being sent overseas for active service. He arrived on the Gallipoli peninsula on 2 August 1915, but was hospitalised just 11 days later with dysentery. His condition worsened and he was sent to hospital in Malta and then England, where he took some weeks to recover. In fact, his health continued to suffer, and he was not fit to re-join the 13th Battalion on active service until August 1916.

On returning to his battalion Bolton-Wood was promoted to lance corporal. At the time 1st Anzac Corps was conducting operations near the French village of Pozières and nearby Mouquet Farm. Albert Bolton-Wood had already seen great success in a quieter part of the Western Front, leading a party of men into enemy trenches and capturing four prisoners. However, he was seriously wounded in the first attack on the OG Lines near Pozières.

On 29 August 1916 the 13th Battalion was called on to attack Mouquet Farm under cover of a heavy artillery barrage. Lance Corporal Robert Bolton-Wood was in charge of a machine-gun crew for the operation. Just before the attack was launched, an artillery shell burst in the trench in which he and his crew were sheltering, and Bolton-Wood and most of the men with him were killed.

In Australia the Sydney Morning Herald ran an article celebrating the award of a Military Cross to Lieutenant Albert Bolton-Wood for his courageous actions at Pozières. On the same day its war casualties column recorded the death of his older brother, Lance Corporal Robert Bolton-Wood.

His body was never recovered, and today he is commemorated on the Australian National Memorial to the missing at Villers-Bretonneux. He had been on the Western Front for just two weeks. Albert Bolton-Wood died of wounds in November 1917, and his grave lies some kilometres away in the St Sever Cemetery. Both brothers were 22 when they died.

The name of Robert Bolton-Wood is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among more than 60,000 Australians who died while serving 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 Private Robert Alex Bolton-Wood, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Dr Meleah Hampton
Historian, Military History Section