The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (3010) Private Alfred Victor Carlson, 50th 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 Troy Clayton, the story for this day was on (3010) Private Alfred Victor Carlson, 50th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

3010 Private Alfred Victor Carlson, 50th Battalion, AIF
KIA 16 January 1917
Photograph: P09291.113

Story delivered 20 August 2015

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Alfred Victor Carlson.

Alf Carlson was born in Goolwa on 16 February 1891, one of seven children of Peter and Rose Carlson. He attended the local school in Goolwa. His father died in 1909, and sometime later Alf Carlson moved to Mt Barker in the hills outside Adelaide, where he undertook an apprenticeship in a greengrocery owned by Mr J.H. Coventry. Carlson was a gregarious and popular man, and in October 1912 he married Mercy Blight in Mount Barker. They went on to have two sons: Leslie and Lindsay.

Alf Carlson enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 18 June 1915. He underwent a period of training before leaving Adelaide for overseas service on the 14th of September 1915 with reinforcements to the 10th Battalion. He was on the Gallipoli peninsula for less than a month before the evacuation, after which he returned to Egypt.

In early 1916 the AIF underwent a period of expansion and reorganisation to accommodate a flood of new recruits. As part of this process Private Carlson was transferred to the 50th Battalion, and was eventually sent to France to fight on the Western Front. He participated in the fierce fighting around the French village of Pozières and nearby Mouquet Farm, somehow coming through unscathed.

The 50th Battalion spent the winter of 1916–17, one of the harshest on record, rotating in and out of the front line. On Christmas Day 1916 Carlson unexpectedly met his wife’s cousin, Henry Blight of the 48th Battalion. The two were so covered in mud from the frozen trenches that they could barely recognise each other. They spent the day together, sharing each other’s Christmas hampers.

In early January 1917 the 50th Battalion returned to the front line near the French village of Flers. Its time there was relatively quiet, and although the enemy made an attack on the line to its left it was not drawn into the fighting. The battalion was withdrawn on 17 January during heavy snow. Its war diary records that three men were killed as the battalion left the front lines. One of those men was Alfred Victor Carlson. Little information survives as to the exact manner of his death, but he was buried at Bulls Road Cemetery in Flers. Carlson died one month short of his 26th birthday.

Private Henry Blight, with whom Alf had shared his last Christmas, was shot and killed one month later.

The names of Alf Carlson and Henry Blight are listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among more than 60,000 Australians who died during the First World War. Carlson’s photograph is displayed today beside the Pool of Reflection.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Private Alfred Victor Carlson, Private James Henry Blight, and all those Australians who have given their lives in the service of our nation.

Dr Meleah Hampton
Historian, Military History Section