The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of Lieutenant Frank Matthew Coffee 24th Infantry Battalion, A.I.F, 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 Lieutenant Frank Matthew Coffee 24th Infantry Battalion, A.I.F, First World War.

Lieutenant Frank Matthew Coffee 24th Infantry Battalion, A.I.F
KIA 18th November 1915

Today we remember and pay tribute to Lieutenant Frank Matthew Coffee.

Frank Coffee was born on 11 April 1887 in Willoughby, New South Wales, one of six children born to Francis and Sarah Coffee. Frank studied at St Stanislaus college in Bathurst and St Ignatius College in Sydney. In 1902 he moved to Kentucky in the United States to study engineering. After returning to Australia for a short period, he returned to America in 1906 to study journalism at Stanford University in California. On his return to Australia, Coffee took up employment in Melbourne with Sydney’s Sun newspaper and later Melbourne’s The Age.

In January 1915, Coffee enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. He was assigned to the 24th Battalion. During training in Broadmeadows, he was promoted to corporal, then sergent, and then 2nd lieutenant before embarking from Melbourne aboard the troopship Demosthenes in July 1915.

The 24th Battalion went ashore at Gallipoli on 4 September and spent the next 16 weeks sharing duty in the Lone Pine trenches with the 23rd Battalion. The fighting at Lone Pine was so dangerous and exhausting that battalions rotated every day. Allied positions were regularly shelled and there was an ever-present danger of enemy snipers. Coffee wrote home to his father in September, remarking:

If I merely write, you will receive the letter a month hence, and by that time we will either have forced the Dardanelles or still be going strong and I may be O.K, wounded or dead. And somehow I don’t expect to be on the “killed” list. Give the whole family my best love and let them know, I will do my duty.

Coffee’s unit was serving in the vicinity of Lone Pine in November 1915, shortly before the Allied decision to evacuate the peninsula. The failure of the August offensive months earlier had prolonged the stalemate and devastated morale. Combined with the onset of winter, continuing the campaign would prove costly. In the final months of the campaign, however, fighting continued.

Trenches were regularly shelled by the enemy making it difficult for troops to consolidate their lines, and necessitating constant repairs to the trenches. Enemy machine-guns were also active, making daily life in the front lines a dangerous affair. Coffee’s unit carried out regular raids on the Turkish trenches during their final months at Gallipoli, often sustaining casualties. Lieutenant Frank Coffee was undertaking a raid with his unit on 18 November when he was hit and killed in action. He was 28 years old.

As Coffee’s death occurred early in the war, little information about the circumstances of the young lieutenant’s death could be obtained. His remains were not located until several years later, partly due to the efforts of his bereft father who worked tirelessly to locate the final resting place of his son.

Coffee’s remains were reinterred at Lone Pine Cemetery on the Gallipoli Peninsula where they lie under the inscription chosen by his grieving parents: “He died for God, Right and Liberty. And such a death is immortality.”

His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among almost 62,000 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 Lieutenant Frank Matthew Coffee, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Meghan Adams
Researcher, Australian War Memorial