The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (7216) Private Harold Creswick, 3rd 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 Sharon Bown, the story for this day was on (7216) Private Harold Creswick, 3rd Battalion, AIF, First World War.

7216 Private Harold Creswick, 3rd Battalion, AIF
KIA 12 April 1918
Story delivered 12 April 2018

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Harold David Creswick.

Harold Creswick was born in 1875, one of three sons of Richard and Margaret Creswick of Wimmera in western Victoria. Harold’s parents separated and remarried when he was young, and for most of his formative years he lived in Melbourne, where he attended Toorak College and spent four years in the school’s cadet corps.

He married Alice Welsh at Beechworth in 1900. The couple and their daughter Thelma lived in North Sydney, where Harold sold life insurance.

The strict recruiting standards for the Australian Imperial Force had prevented Harold from enlisting earlier in the war, but by 1917, these had been relaxed in order to fill reinforcement quotas. At the age of 42, Creswick enlisted at Bondi Junction in February 1917. After three months training at the Sydney Showground, he embarked for England with a reinforcement group for the 3rd Battalion. Creswick was left stranded in Western Australia when he failed to return to the troopship before it departed Fremantle for Plymouth. He was docked pay for this minor misdemeanour, and sailed for England several weeks later.

Creswick spent the following months training on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire before sailing for France in March 1918. He joined the 3rd Battalion while it rested at Ridge Wood Camp near Ypres in Belgium, and several days later, the Germans launched their Spring Offensive. Australian units in the north were rushed south to help stem the German advance on Amiens and secure the surrounding area.

The 3rd Battalion was sent to Strazeele in French Flanders in an effort to defend the area against a further German assault. The rifle companies immediately took up defensive positions at the train station, where Creswick was manning a Lewis gun in a forward outpost. German artillery fell on the position later that evening, killing Creswick and killing or wounding almost every man of his platoon.

Aged 43 at the time of his death, Harold Creswick was buried nearby, and after the war was reinterred at the Outtersteene Communal Cemetery at Bailleul, where he rests today. A small epitaph on his headstone reminds us of the grief endured by his wife and daughter: “The dear husband & father of A. & T. Creswick of Sydney”.

Harold Creswick 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 Private Harold David Creswick, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Aaron Pegram
Historian, Military History Section