The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (429257) Pilot Officer Leslie John Nichols, No. 158 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Second Woorld 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 Gerard Pratt, the story for this day was on (429257) Pilot Officer Leslie John Nichols, No. 158 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Second Woorld War.

429257 Pilot Officer Leslie John Nichols, No. 158 Squadron, Royal Air Force
KIA 7 February 1945
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 7 November 2016

Today we pay tribute to Pilot Officer Leslie John Nichols, who was killed on active service during the Second World War.

Born in Springwood, New South Wales, on 28 June 1923, Leslie Nichols was the son of George Henry Nichols and Elsie Inez Nichols. Residing in the Sydney suburb of Artarmon, he worked as a clerk and served as a signalman in the 1st Australian Motor Division Signals attached to the 6th Anti-Tank Battery of the 102nd Anti-Tank Regiment of the Militia.

Enlisting in the Royal Australian Air Force in November 1942, Nichols began training as an air gunner and wireless operator, and in August 1943 he embarked for overseas service. As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, Nichols was one of almost 27,500 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and engineers who joined squadrons based in Britain throughout the course of the war.

Arriving in Britain in September 1943, Nichols undertook further specialist training before being posted in August 1944 to No. 158 Squadron, Royal Air Force. As part of RAF Bomber Command, the squadron was equipped with the four-engine Handley Page Halifax heavy bomber.

While flying his 23rd operation with the squadron on 7 February 1945, Nichols was part of a raid over Germany when the Halifax in which he was wireless operator collided with a Halifax of No. 77 Squadron and crashed near Geldern, Germany.

The pilot ordered the crew to bail out, but only three of the seven were able to do so safely. Those who survived became prisoners of the Germans and survived the war.

Nichols and fellow Australian Flying Officer John Leslie Beeson, along with two British crewmates, were killed in the crash. The commander of No. 158 Squadron wrote to Nichols’s mother, saying that he “had proved himself a worthy member of an excellent crew”.

Nichols was 21 years old when he died. His body was recovered buried in a communal grave with his crewmates at the British and Commonwealth Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Kleve, Germany.

Nichols’s name is listed here on the Roll of Honour on my left, among some 40,000 other Australians who died while serving in the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Pilot Officer Leslie John Nichols, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Dr Lachlan Grant
Historian, Military History Section