The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (3915) Private Richard Saxon, 8th Australian 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 (3915) Private Richard Saxon, 8th Australian Battalion, AIF, First World War.

3915 Private Richard Saxon, 8th Australian Battalion, AIF
KIA 18 August 1916

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Richard Saxon.

Richard Saxon was born in Melbourne around 1872, the son of Margaret and Joseph Saxon.

He grew up in the suburb of Brunswick alongside a large family. After his father died in 1907, Richard found work as a quarryman, living with his mother, Margaret, and at least one brother, Henry.

On 12 July 1915, Richard and his brother Henry enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and were given consecutive service numbers. Richard was 43 years old, Henry 35.

After initial training in Australia, in November the pair were allotted as reinforcements to the 8th Battalion and embarked from Adelaide, bound for overseas service. After travelling to Egypt, in late March 1916 the Saxon brothers embarked aboard the troopship Transylvania. Landing in France in early April, they travelled from Marseilles to join their battalion in the trenches, and were finally taken on strength in July.

The battalion’s first major action in France took place that month, at Pozieres in the Somme valley.

The village of Pozieres lay atop a ridge roughly in the centre of the British sector of the Somme battlefield, near the highest point on the battlefield. The village was an important German defensive position, an outpost to the second defensive trench system known to the British as the O.G. (or Old German) lines.

The allies planned to launch a large-scale offensive in the Somme region of northern France, but when the Germans launched their own major operation against the French at Verdun, the British were left to conduct the battle with reduced assistance.

Intended in part to divert the German army’s attention from Verdun, the offensive around Pozieres saw the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Australian divisions wrest a small, devastated area from the enemy, but at a staggering cost.

Over 42 days the Australians made as many as 19 attacks against German positions. The final casualties totalled an appalling 23,000 men killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. The losses sustained throughout that exhausting period were almost unsustainable for a volunteer army.

The 1st Division – of which the Saxons’ 8th Battalion was part – was the first to go into the battle, doing so on 23 July 1916. The Australians managed to capture the village, and were subjected to relentless artillery bombardment that reduced the village to rubble.

The 2nd Division relieved the 1st, and suffered even more losses attacking towards the heights east of the village. The 4th Division then went in, pressing its attack north towards Mouquet Farm and holding off German attempts to retake Pozieres. Each of the three Australian divisions, though severely reduced, served a second tour on this notorious battleground.

The Australian official historian Charles Bean later wrote that Pozieres ridge “is more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth.”

While Henry Saxon survived the carnage of Pozieres, Richard was posted as missing on 18 August.

Henry later reported that he was with Richard when he was taken prisoner that day. “I could pick him out of six of my mates which they had on the German lines at daybreak,” he wrote. A court of enquiry later determined that Richard had been killed in action on 18 August 1916.

His remains were buried just east of Pozieres, and today lie in the Pozieres British Cemetery in France, one of more than 1300 casualties from the First World War.


His name 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 Richard Saxon, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Duncan Beard, Editor
Military History Section