The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (973) Private Patrick Thomas Pyne, 10th 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 (973) Private Patrick Thomas Pyne, 10th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

973 Private Patrick Thomas Pyne, 10th Battalion, AIF
KIA 25–29 April 1915

Story delivered 25 April 2017

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Patrick Thomas Pyne.

Patrick Pyne was born on 25 June 1895 in Wellington, South Australia, to John and Elizabeth Pyne. He was the third of six sons born to the couple.

He grew up in Wellington and Strathalbyn and attended Strathalbyn State School. When his father, a mounted police constable, was posted to Renmark, Pyne remained at Strathalbyn with his older brothers. When the Strathalbyn Post Office was opened in 1913, Pyne gained employment as a postal assistant. One of his older brothers, Octavius, worked as a telegraph linesman in the district.

A social young man with a wide group of friends, he was well known for his “bright and cheery nature” and his sporting ability. He was a member of the Strathalbyn Rifle Club, and reportedly “a great shot”.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Pyne travelled to Adelaide and on 2 September 1914 he enlisted at Morphettville Racecourse, joining the newly-raised 10th Battalion.

A little over a month of training followed, before Pyne embarked with the 10th Battalion from Outer Harbour, Adelaide, aboard the transport ship Ascanius. After a stop at Fremantle, where several companies of the 11th Battalion were embarked, Ascanius joined the Australian Imperial Force’s first convoy, which had formed up at and departed from Albany.

Pyne kept a diary during this time and recorded several events, including the death and burial at sea of a comrade, and a collision between Ascanius and another transport ship, Shropshire. He wrote of the event:

We were all sleeping peacefully in our hammocks when a loud crash came, and the ship seemed to stagger … in a twinkling we were in our life belts and up on deck … prepared for the worst.

Though both ships sustained serious damage, the worst did not occur, and the men of the 10th Battalion were able to disembark at Alexandria in Egypt in mid-December.

Several months of hard training in the desert followed, but there were frequent periods of leave for the men to explore Cairo and its surrounds. In a letter to his parents Pyne described some of sights he had witnessed;

There are sights you see there that would not be permitted in S.A. In one part there is a place called Wazah Bazar. It consists of streets where all the lowest class gather.


In March, the 10th Battalion and other battalions in the 3rd Brigade sailed for Lemnos in preparation for the Gallipoli campaign.

In the early hours of 25 April 1915, the men of the 10th Battalion rowed silently towards the Turkish shore at what would become known as Anzac Cove. The war diary of the battalion records:

No sound was heard, except the splash of the oars; we thought that our landing was to be effected quite unopposed, but when our boats were within about 30 yards of the beach a rifle was fired from the hill in front of us above the beach, right in front of where we were heading for. Almost immediately heavy rifle and machine gun fire was opened upon us.

The men finished rowing to the shore and dashed for the heights above the beach. The fighting which took place inland quickly became confused and at some point in the next four days, Pyne was killed.

He was listed as missing in action on 5 May. An investigation into his fate found that he had been killed in action sometime between 25 and 29 April.

He was 19 years old.

Pyne’s remains were recovered, and he was laid to rest in the “Valley of Death”, Shrapnel Valley, by Padre William “Fighting Mac” McKenzie. By the time the Australians left Gallipoli in December, his remains had been relocated to Beach Cemetery.

After the end of the war, his exact burial location could not be identified, and today a headstone in Beach Cemetery on the Gallipoli peninsula states that Pyne is “Believed to be buried in this cemetery.”

One of his officers, Captain Eric Sexton later wrote of Pyne:

I knew him well. He was a fine young fellow, a great shot, and the possessor of a record of which any soldier might be proud.

At the conclusion of a mass dedicated to Pyne in his home town, Father Gurry of the Church of the Good Shepherd offered the following lines:

The hero boy that dies in blooming years,
In man’s regret he lives, and woman’s tears;
More sacred than in life, and lovelier far,
For having perished in the front of war.

The Pyne family suffered further loss in March 1917, when their eldest son, Octavius, who had enlisted in March 1915, died of wounds suffered after being shot in the head while laying telephone line as part of a wiring party on the Western Front. He was laid to rest in Boulogne Eastern Cemetery. He was 26 years old.

Patrick’s nephew, Dr Remington Pyne, continued the family tradition, serving as a medical officer in Korea after the 1953 armistice. His great nephew is the Honourable Christopher Pyne, MP and cabinet minister.

Patrick and Octavius Pyne’s names are 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 Patrick Thomas Pyne, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.