The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (194) Second Lieutenant Harold Smith, 15th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

Place Middle East: Ottoman Empire, Turkey, Dardanelles, Gallipoli
Accession Number AWM2016.2.131
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 10 May 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 Craig Berelle, the story for this day was on (194) Second Lieutenant Harold Smith, 15th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

Film order form
Speech transcript

Second Lieutenant Harold Smith, 15th Battalion, AIF
DOW 10 May 1915
No photograph in collection – Family supplied

Story delivered 10 May 2016

Today we remember and pay tribute to Lieutenant Harold George Smith, who died while fighting on Gallipoli in the First World War.

Harold Smith was born in 1894 to George and Mary Smith of Daylesford in Victoria. He attended school in Daylesford before the family moved to Ayr in Queensland. There, in the years before the war, he worked as a farmer and held a commission in the local Militia’s Kennedy Regiment in the Townsville area.

When war broke out in August 1914 Smith enlisted in the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force, raised for the sole purpose of occupying the German colonies directly to Australia’s north. More than a quarter of the 2,000 men who made up the ANMEF were infantry Militia from the Kennedy Regiment. Smith embarked for nearby Thursday Island, where he volunteered for overseas service and the ANMEF departed for German New Guinea, but a strike among the firemen on board the transport ship TSS Kanowa resulted in the Kennedy Regiment returning to Townsville, where it was ultimately disbanded.

Smith was discharged from the ANMEF and enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in Townsville three days later. After a period of training he was promoted to sergeant and embarked for Egypt with the 15th Battalion in December 1914. Smith spent the following months in Mena Camp near Cairo until April 1915, when Australian and New Zealand forces were included in an allied effort to force a passage through the Dardanelles and knock Ottoman Turkey out of the war.

Smith landed on Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, forming part of the third wave of troops that came ashore at Anzac Cove later that evening. The 15th Battalion was immediately rushed inland to assist the 3rd Brigade on the second ridge amid mounting Turkish resistance, and in the following days helped shore up positions around the features that became known as Pope’s Hill and Russell’s Top. Those first few days of fighting cost the battalion dearly. With a number of officers killed and wounded, Smith was given a field commission and promoted to second lieutenant.

Harold Smith was wounded in the 15th Battalion’s costly and unsuccessful attack on the Turkish trenches opposite Quinn’s Post on the night of 9 May 1915. Stretcher-bearers carried him down to Anzac Cove and he was evacuated, but succumbed to his wounds on the transport ship Lutzow as it made its way to the field hospitals in Egypt. Aged 21, Smith was buried at sea and is commemorated on the Lone Pine Memorial to the Missing, alongside 4,900 Australian and New Zealand soldiers who died in the fighting on Gallipoli and have no known grave.

Smith’s name is also listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among 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 Lieutenant Harold Smith, 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 (194) Second Lieutenant Harold Smith, 15th Battalion, AIF, First World War. (video)