The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (3422) Lance-Corporal Robert James Kelso, 41st Battalion, 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 Troy Clayton, the story for this day was on (3422) Lance-Corporal Robert James Kelso, 41st Battalion, First World War.

3422 Lance-Corporal Robert James Kelso, 41st Battalion
DOW 8 August 1918

Today we remember and pay tribute to Lance-Corporal Robert James Kelso.

Robert Kelso was born on 30 May 1897 to Joseph and Annie Matilda Kelso in the Brisbane suburb of New Farm. The eldest brother of Eliza Jane and Isabella May, Robert worked as a clerk and served for four years as a senior cadet in the Brisbane region before enlisting into the Australian Imperial Force in November 1916. Two months later, he embarked for Europe aboard the Ayeshire from Sydney, training first in England before arriving on the Western Front in France in November 1917 as part of the 41st Battalion.

On the night of 25/26 May 1918, while defending a section of the front near Villers-Bretonneux, A Company of the 41st Battalion, of which Kelso was part, came under heavy German mustard gas attack. Described as “the worst experience we have yet had with gas,” the entire company, save for only four men, had to be evacuated, “a good proportion of them blind or partially blind”. Kelso numbered among the injured, and was sent to England to recover from his wounds for a month.

On the 8th of August 1918, Kelso and the 41st Battalion participated in an enormous Allied offensive known as the battle of Amiens or the Third Battle of the Somme. This offensive consisted of a joint attack of the British Fourth Army and the French First Army, as well as Australian and Canadian troops. The objective was to drive the Germans up to 11 kilometres east of the important town and rail hub of Amiens. The attack was assisted by 430 British tanks, their movements kept secret from the Germans by the use of aircraft to drown out engine noise. The enormously successful attack cost the Germans 27,000 casualties in a single day, and 8 August 1918 was later described by German general Erich Ludendorff as “the black day of the German army”.

On this day the 41st Battalion was operating north of Hamel, having been given the difficult task of capturing a one mile long stretch of the front to a depth of 1500 yards. The battalion was successful, but Kelso was wounded by a high explosive German shell that broke both of his thighs, injuries from which he would later die in an area dressing station of the 13th Field Ambulance. He was 21 years old.

Following his death, Robert’s family devoted great attention to finding out the particulars of the death of their “dear boy”. The Secretary of the Wounded and Missing Inquiry Bureau Australian Red Cross Society put in great effort to find out the circumstances of Kelso’s death on behalf of his “broken-hearted mother”. He is buried at Fouilloy Communal Cemetery in France. A simple epitaph by his grieving parents appears on his headstone: “He died for freedom’s sake”.

Lance-Corporal Robert James Kelso 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 Lance-Corporal Robert James Kelso, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

David Sutton
Historian, Military History Section