The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (400981) Sergeant Rex Alfred Gotts, No. 50 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Second 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 (400981) Sergeant Rex Alfred Gotts, No. 50 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Second World War.

400981 Sergeant Rex Alfred Gotts, No. 50 Squadron, Royal Air Force
KIA 23 September 1942
Photograph: P04134.004

Story delivered 24 March 2016

Today we pay tribute to Sergeant Rex Alfred Gotts, who was killed on active service with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

Born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond on 7 March 1920, Rex Gotts was the son David Rex Elmo Gotts and Reubina Elizabeth Gotts.

Gotts was working as a clerk when he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in Melbourne on 7 December 1940, aged 20. Around this time, he married Emily Joan Parker.

He began aircrew training and soon embarked for overseas service, via Canada, to Britain. As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, Watson was one of almost 27,500 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and engineers who joined squadrons based in Britain throughout the course of the war.

A photograph in the Memorial’s collection shows Sergeant Gotts with fellow Australian Sergeant William Frederick Collins. This photograph, seen here today in front of the Pool of Reflection, was taken at Jasper Railway Station in Alberta, Canada, shortly after the pair had completed a training course. Collins was later killed during an operation over occupied France.

Gotts undertook further specialist training in Britain before being posted on to No. 50 Squadron, Royal Air Force, as part of the RAF’s Bomber Command.

On the night of 23 September 1942 the bombers of No. 50 Squadron were participating in a raid on Wismar, a port town on Germany’s Baltic coast.

Returning from the target, the four-engine Avro Lancaster heavy bomber in which Gotts was a wireless air gunner exploded and crashed into the Baltic Sea off the coast of the Danish island of Lolland. Gotts and all six crewmates were killed. They included fellow Australians Sergeant Charles Francis Watson, Sergeant Harlod Phillips, and Sergeant James Carnley, British crewmembers Flight Sergeant Henry Wade and Sergeant William Trottier, and South African Flight Sergeant George Dickenson.

Gotts was 22 years old.

Gotts’s body was never recovered, and his name is commemorated upon the Air Forces Memorial overlooking the River Thames. The Runnymede memorial lists all British and Commonwealth airmen with no known grave.

Gotts’s name is listed here on the Roll of Honour on my left, among some 40,000 other Australians who died while serving in the Second World War. His photograph is displayed today beside the Pool of Reflection where he can be seen standing to the right.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Sergeant Rex Alfred Gotts, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Dr Lachlan Grant
Historian, Military History Section