The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (118) Private Charles Leslie Carter, 21st 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 (118) Private Charles Leslie Carter, 21st Battalion, AIF, First World War.

118 Private Charles Leslie Carter, 21st Battalion, AIF
KIA 29 July 1916
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 5 May 2016

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Charles Leslie Carter.

Known as “Charlie”, Carter was born in Camperdown, Victoria, to George and Harriet Carter. He attended the local state school and later worked on dairy farms and as a stock rider. He was prominently associated with the Pomborneit Good Templars, a temperance association, and was a member of the Camperdown light horse. He was described as being “highly-respected by all with whom he came in contact, being an upright and good-living young man … his likable disposition won him many friends with whom he was most popular”.

Carter enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in January 1915 at the age of 19. His father wrote him a note of consent, and while he initially went into the light horse he soon transferred to the infantry and was posted to the 21st Battalion. He left Australia in May 1915 on board the troopship Ulysses, bound for Egypt.

Private Carter left Egypt for the Gallipoli peninsula that August. On the way there his transport ship was torpedoed by a German submarine 56 kilometres from Lemnos, forcing the ship to be abandoned by the troops aboard. Carter was said to have had “a particularly trying time” and “spent a perilous period in the water, only being rescued by a British sea plane three hours later and taken to Mudros”.

Carter finally arrived on Gallipoli after the major offensives had died down. He served there until the evacuation, and returned to Egypt for further training. He received just one blemish on his service record for breaking camp and being absent from roll call in February 1916. Next month he left with his battalion for France to serve on the Western Front.

The 21st Battalion’s first major battle on the Western Front came in late July 1916. The 1st Australian Division had just captured the French village of Pozières, and the 21st was to participate in an operation to capture the major German trenches to the north-east. On 29 July the battalion attacked under some of the heaviest shell-fire of the war. Private Andrew Clancey, who served in Carter’s platoon section, later described the experience:

hung up in the trenches at midnight for hours while the big bombardment and … charge were on … It seems wonderful how any of us came out alive. They call it the night of horrors, and a good name, too.

The following morning Clancey wrote that “the trenches were almost level and the dead were lying everywhere”. As the men tried to get their bearings, Clancey and his party came across the body of Private Charles Carter, who had been killed in action during the night. They buried their comrade in a nearby shell hole.

Carter’s body was retrieved from the battlefield after the war and he was reinterred in the Pozières British Cemetery under the words “Duty nobly done.” He was 21 years old.

His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among more than 60,000 Australians who died while serving in 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 Charles Leslie Carter, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Dr Meleah Hampton
Historian, Military History Section