The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (2118) Private Edward Franklin Fox, 22nd Australian Infantry 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 Meredith Duncan, the story for this day was on (2118) Private Edward Franklin Fox, 22nd Australian Infantry Battalion, First World War.

2118 Private Edward Franklin Fox, 22nd Australian Infantry Battalion
KIA 27 July 1916
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 23 February 2015

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Edward Franklin Fox, who died in France in 1916.

“Eddie” Fox was the only son of Henry and Edith Fox of Armadale, Victoria. He attended Armadale State School, and then undertook a five-year apprenticeship in carpentry under the guidance of his father.

Eddie enlisted in the AIF on 13 July 1915, just shy of 22 years old. He left Australia in September 1915 with other young men from Victoria to reinforce the 22nd Battalion, then serving in the Gallipoli campaign. He joined the battalion in Egypt after its withdrawal from the peninsula, and sailed to France in early 1916.

The battalion’s first major action was around the village of Pozières. This successful two-week campaign to recapture the village and surrounds was part of the major British offensive on the Somme, but it was a bitter and costly victory. Eddie Fox was one of the battalion’s casualties. Though reported wounded and missing, he was not declared killed in action until 1917. His body was never found.

For many long months his parents and two sisters had no word of Eddie’s fate. In March 1917, however, a statement from a boyhood friend from Armadale who was a member of Eddie’s unit finally cast light on the last moments of his life.

Corporal Walter Maitland had been resting with Eddie and two other soldiers in an old German gun pit on the firing line at Pozières on 27 July. Maitland described how a German shell burst over them, killing the other three men, including Eddie. The severity of the German artillery barrage over the following hours prevented the recovery of the bodies, but Maitland was certain Eddie was killed, his body lost, like so many others, to the carnage of the battlefield.

The Official Historian, Charles Bean, later described the lot of the men of the 22nd Battalion that day: “[They] could do nothing, except sit in the trench waiting to be killed or buried by the collapsing banks, and then to be dug out and buried again.”

Eddie Fox is one of thousands of Australians who died on the battlefields of France and Belgium with no known grave. His family belatedly posted an obituary in the Melbourne papers, some ten months after his death. It simply said: “For God, King and country. Thy will be done.”

Edward Fox was 23 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 service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Private Edward Franklin Fox, and all of those Australians who have given their lives in service of our nation.

Dr Steven Bullard
Historian, Military History Section

Sources:
Obituary, Argus, 26 May 1917.

National Archives of Australia, Edward Franklin Fox, personal service dossier.

C.E.W. Bean, Official History of Australian in the war of 1914–1918, volume III, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1921–42, p. 618.