The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (788) Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant Leslie Perry, 7th Light Horse Regiment, 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 (788) Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant Leslie Perry, 7th Light Horse Regiment, AIF, First World War.

788 Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant Leslie Perry, 7th Light Horse Regiment, AIF
KIA 11 December 1915
No photograph in collection – Family supplied

Today we remember and pay tribute to Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant Leslie Perry, who was killed fighting on Gallipoli in the First World War.

Leslie Perry was born in 1877, one of seven children of Samuel and Martha Perry of the Sydney suburb of Surrey Hills. He attended the Cleveland Street School and later worked as a salesman and commercial traveller. He married Emma Kenehan at St Joseph’s Church in Newtown in 1909. Leslie and Emma lived in the inner-city suburb of Haberfield in the years before the war, and their son, Max, was born in 1913.

Leslie enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in November 1914, and after three months of training sailed to Egypt with a reinforcement group for the 7th Light Horse Regiment. The AIF’s first real test in battle took place two months later, when Australian troops of the 1st Division landed on the Gallipoli peninsula as part of a wider British plan to force a passage through the Dardanelles and knock Ottoman Turkey out of the war. The light horse was considered unsuited for the Gallipoli landings, but came ashore without their horses one month later as reinforcements. The 7th Light Horse Regiment was attached to the 1st Division, which by this stage was fighting a defensive battle around the beachhead at Anzac Cove.

A fortnight after arriving, Leslie was evacuated to Egypt with a septic wound to his hand, and did not return until early August. By then, Allied forces were attempting to break the stalemate that had persisted since the landings, with the 7th Light Horse Regiment occupying positions in the area around Brown’s Dip and reinforcing the fighting at Lone Pine. Despite the great cost of the offensive, Leslie survived the fighting and was attached to the regimental stores. There he was promoted to sergeant and, in October, Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant.

By December the fighting on Gallipoli had virtually ceased as each side hunkered down for the winter. The lines had changed very little since the landings in April, and it was clear by this stage that Australian troops would soon withdraw. On the 11th of December the 7th Light Horse Regiment moved up the line to occupy a position known as Ryrie’s Post, in what the records tell us was a relatively quiet day on Gallipoli. Though it does not provide details, the regimental war diary records the regiment suffering one fatality that day: Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant Leslie Perry. He was buried, age 38, at Shell Green Cemetery on Gallipoli.

The Australians began withdrawing from Gallipoli two days later. Charles Bean writes in the official history:

the men hated to leave their dead mates at the mercy of the Turks. For days after breaking the news there were never absent from the cemeteries men by themselves, in one, twos and threes, erecting crosses or tenderly “tidying-up” the grave of a friend.

This was not the only loss suffered by the Perry family during the war, with Leslie’s uncle John dying of wounds in France in 1918.

Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant Perry is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among more than 60,000 others from the First World War. His photograph is displayed today beside the Pool of Reflection.

This is just one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant Leslie Perry, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Aaron Pegram
Historian, Military History Section
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