The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (1923) Lance Corporal Grenville Ward, 37th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

Place Europe: Belgium, Flanders, West-Vlaanderen, Messines
Accession Number AWM2016.2.20
Collection type Film
Object type Last Post film
Physical description 16:9
Maker Australian War Memorial
Place made Australia: Australian Capital Territory, Canberra, Campbell
Date made 20 January 2016
Access Open
Conflict First World War, 1914-1918
Copyright Item copyright: © Australian War Memorial
Creative Commons License This item is licensed under CC BY-NC
Copying Provisions Copyright restrictions apply. Only personal, non-commercial, research and study use permitted. Permission of copyright holder required for any commercial use and/or reproduction.
Description

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 (1923) Lance Corporal Grenville Ward, 37th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

Film order form
Speech transcript

1923 Lance Corporal Grenville Ward, 37th Battalion, AIF
KIA 8 June 1917
No photograph in collection – Family supplied

Story delivered 20 January 2016

Today we remember and pay tribute to Lance Corporal Grenville Ward, who was killed fighting in Belgium in the First World War.

Grenville Ward was born in 1887, one of a large family born to James and Ellen Ward of Carboor, near Wangaratta in north-east Victoria. He attended state school in the Carboor district and was working as a labourer on the construction of the Burrinjuck Reservoir when the First World War began.

Having enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at Wangaratta in March 1916, Ward spent several months training at Seymour Military Camp before embarked for the training camps of England with a reinforcement group for the newly raised 37th Battalion.

As part of the Australian 3rd Division, the 37th Battalion was among the most highly trained Australian units to see service on the Western Front. Having joined the battalion in England, Ward embarked with it to France in November, where it entered the line for the first time in the relatively quiet Houplines sector just outside the town of Armentières. There, throughout the terrible winter of 1916–17, the battalion carried out a regimen of active patrolling and aggressive trench raiding against the German positions.

The 37th Battalion prided itself on its skills in trench raiding; in February 1917, 400 of its members, including Ward, joined troops from the 38th Battalion to form a composite “raiding battalion” which carried out a highly successful enterprise on the German lines. It was around this time that Ward’s leadership abilities were noticed by his superiors and he was promoted to lance corporal.

The 37th Battalion’s first major action on the Western Front took place several months later at Messines, when 19 underground mines were detonated beneath the German positions. The Australian 3rd and 4th Divisions attacked the German positions alongside British and New Zealand troops. Although the German front line had been completely engulfed by the explosions, the 37th Battalion passed through the debris to successfully occupy the German trenches in the face of growing resistance. The battalion spent the following days under constant German bombardment and machine-gun fire as they consolidated their newly won positions.

Two days after the successful attack at Messines Ward’s platoon was consolidating the ground gained from the enemy when its position came under heavy shelling from German guns. Ward was hit in the head by fragments of a high-explosive shell and killed instantly. Aged 30 at the time, he was hastily buried nearby, and the whereabouts of his grave were lost in the years after the war.

Ward is one of 6,187 Australians with no known graves whose names are commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres.

This was not the only loss the Ward family experienced during the war. Several months after Grenville Ward’s death it was communicated that his younger brother, Gunner Haviland Ward of the 12th Field Artillery Brigade, had been mortally wounded during the Third Battle of Ypres.

Grenville Ward’s name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, along with more than 60,000 others from the First World War. His photograph is displayed today beside the Pool of Reflection.

This is just one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Lance Corporal Grenville Ward, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Aaron Pegram
Historian, Military History Section

  • Video of The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (1923) Lance Corporal Grenville Ward, 37th Battalion, AIF, First World War. (video)