The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (2392) Corporal Charles James Moore, 14th Machine Gun Company, 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 (2392) Corporal Charles James Moore, 14th Machine Gun Company, AIF, First World War.

2392 Corporal Charles James Moore, 14th Machine Gun Company, AIF
KIA 20 July 1916
Today we remember and pay tribute to Corporal Charles James Moore.

Charles Moore was born in 1893 in the Sydney suburb of Newtown, the fourth of six children born to William and Bessie Moore. In 1900 his father and his infant sister died within two weeks of each other. In the wake of this double tragedy, his mother lacked the means to care for all of her children, so the four boys were raised separately. The family managed to stay in touch with one another, and Charles attended Chatswood Public School. As a young man, Charles, known as “Charlie”, worked as a salesman in Sargood’s Brothers Warehouse in Sydney. He was living with his mother in Artamon when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at the age of 21.

Charles Moore enlisted soon after news of the Gallipoli landings reached Australia. After some initial training in New South Wales, he sailed to the Australian army camp in Egypt, where he completed further training. In early November 1915, he joined the 1st Battalion on Gallipoli.

Moore’s letters home from Gallipoli show how he adapted to the realities of trench warfare. He wrote to his brother, “You hear a shell coming and somebody will sing out and down we all go then once again, resume your work as if nothing had happened. The first few days scared hell out of me, but am now used to it.”

On 4 December, he had a near miss when a bullet grazed his head, but he was back in action the very next day. By the end of that month, the Imperial forces had withdrawn from the Gallipoli peninsula. As a result, Moore was back in Egypt by the end of the year.

In early 1916, Moore began training at the School of Instruction at Zeitoun outside Cairo. Here he learnt how to use a machine gun, and in March he was transferred to the 14th Machine Gun Company. He then sailed with this company to France to join the major British offensive on the Western Front.
The 14th Australian Infantry Brigade, to which Moore’s company was attached, marched to the north of France to near the town of Fromelles. To the south, Allied forces were conducting a major offensive along the Somme River section of the Western Front. The role of the 14th Brigade in this campaign was to create a diversion and pin German forces at Fromelles, preventing them from moving south and reinforcing their defences along the Somme.

On 19 July 1916, Australian and other Allied troops went over the top and into no-man’s land. An earlier artillery bombardment of the German lines had failed to break the German defences, and the Australian troops came under heavy machine-gun fire from the so-called Sugar Loaf salient. British and Australian forces did manage to capture sections of the German trenches, but were confronted by a counter-attack during the night. By the next morning the 14th Infantry Brigade had been ordered to withdraw. On that day, 20 July 1916, Charles Moore was killed in action.

He was one of almost two thousand Australians killed on that single night of fighting. In terms of lives lost, the battle represents the worst 24 hours of Australian military history.

Charlie’s remains were never identified. He is one of over 10,000 Australian soldiers commemorated at Villers-Bretonneux Memorial in France.
Corporal Charles James Moore 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 Corporal Charles James Moore, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Thomas Rogers
Historian, Military History Section