The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of Second Lieutenant Thomas Herbert Blair, 38th 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 Gerard Pratt, the story for this day was on Second Lieutenant Thomas Herbert Blair, 38th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

Second Lieutenant Thomas Herbert Blair, 38th Battalion, AIF
DOW 28 May 1917

No photograph in collection

Today we remember and pay tribute to Second Lieutenant Thomas Herbert Blair.

Herb Blair was born in March 1897, the only son of William and Elizabeth Blair of Kyneton, Victoria. He attended the local state school, where he proved to be a very able student, and went on to Kyneton Grammar School and the local high school, where he became a prefect. While at school he became an officer in the local senior cadets.

On leaving school Herb obtained a position in the Lands Department in Melbourne and began a period of service with the citizen’s militia. In February 1916 he put his military experience to more practical use by enlisting for service in the Great War. He was a month shy of 19 when he entered the Australian Imperial Force.

Blair was posted to the newly formed 38th Battalion and was quickly promoted to sergeant. He left Australia in late 1916, arriving in England that November. He joined his battalion in France in time for the winter of 1916–17, during which the battalion conducted a number of raids on German-held trenches.

Blair’s fellow officers always “spoke of him in the highest terms and commented most favourably on the manner in which he had always carried out his duty”. In May 1917, just a few months after arriving on the Western Front, Blair was promoted to second lieutenant.

Eleven days later he was one of seven officers and 214 Other Ranks to form a raiding party to enter the German trenches in the Ypres Salient in Belgium. Supported by the artillery, the party successfully reached the German position and brought back a prisoner. Four officers and more than 90 Other Ranks became casualties during the raid.

One of those casualties was Second Lieutenant Herb Blair. He had been hit by a bullet in the lower part of his body and was quickly rendered unconscious. Although he was taken with little delay to a dressing station, he died shortly after arriving. A friend of his, Lieutenant Alec Fraser, saw him just before he died, and wrote that “he looked just the same – young and splendid. Everything that could be done was done, but the case was hopeless from the first.”

The principle of the Kyneton High School addressed his students with the news of their former prefect’s death. He said that Blair was “manly in physique and manly in character – every inch a soldier; and life opened out before him a sweet and precious thing”. Thomas Herbert Blair was buried at the nearby Strand Military Cemetery by the 38th Battalion’s chaplain the day after he died. He was 19 years old.

His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, along with more than 60,000 others from the First World War.

This is but one of the many stories of courage and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Second Lieutenant Thomas Herbert Blair, and all of those Australians who have given their lives in the service of our nation.