The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (3458a) Private Alfred Reeves, 60th Battalion, 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 Charis May, the story for this day was on (3458a) Private Alfred Reeves, 60th Battalion, First World War.

3458a Private Alfred Reeves, 60th Battalion
KIA 19 July 1916
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 8 October 2014

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Alfred Reeves.

Alfred was born in the Melbourne suburb of Burnley around 1884. He attended the local school, where he was nicknamed “Dux” Reeves. While he was known at school as “one of the quietest-mannered fellows who ever breathed”, he was also well known for not being able to keep out of a fight, and was regularly involved in dust-ups over school football games.

He played both football and cricket for three or four clubs at a time, including the Rosedale and East Richmond football clubs. He was a founding member of the Burnley school Old Boys’ Association and was said to be “involved in anything else going down in the East End”.

After school this larger-than-life character got work in a plate-laying gang on the railways, and travelled all over Australia working in railway camps where, he said, he “rubbed shoulders with the best and the worst”. In August 1900 he was part of a gang of 52 travelling to work on an empty ballast train when the train derailed near Fairfield Station in Melbourne, toppling over and killing three of the workers and badly injuring at least six more. Reeves was lucky to escape unscathed.

On the outbreak of the First World War Alfred Reeves was married to Alice and working as a storeman. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 21 July 1915. One of his schoolmates commented that “nobody who had grown up alongside ‘Dux’ Reeves … could have imagined him keeping out of the big fight”. Before he left Australia Reeves gave this friend, a newspaper reporter, a picture of himself. He said, “you might want to add my picture to the gallery some day and you won’t have to run around and look for it”. The fate of this photograph is unknown, and the Memorial’s collection contains no image to display today beside the Pool of Reflection.

Reeves spent nearly six months training in Egypt. As part of the reorganisation of the AIF in early 1916 he was transferred through a number of battalions, finally settling in the 60th. He arrived in France to fight on the Western Front in June 1916.

On 19 July the 60th Battalion participated in its first major operation on the Western Front – Fromelles. It was a disaster. In a single day the battalion suffered 757 casualties, nearly its total strength.

In the end Reeves’ journalist friend needed the photograph Reeves had given him. Somewhere in the turmoil of that day Alfred Reeves was killed in action. There were no reports as to how or exactly where he died, but after a year of investigation the authorities had no choice but to declare that he had been killed on 19 July 1916. In the parlance of the day, the Richmond newspaper reported that “everyone who ever knew him will regret the passing of a clean white fellow through and through”. Alfred Reeves was 34 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 Private Alfred Reeves, and all of those Australians who have given their lives in the service of our nation.