The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (4881) Sergeant John McGregor, 57th Infantry Battalion, AIF, First World War.

Places
Accession Number AWM2017.1.190
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 09 July 2017
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 Dennis Stockman, the story for this day was on (4881) Sergeant John McGregor, 57th Infantry Battalion, AIF, First World War.

Film order form
Speech transcript

4881 Sergeant John McGregor, 57th Infantry Battalion, AIF KIA 24 March 1917
Story delivered 9 July 2017

Today we remember and pay tribute to Sergeant John McGregor.

John McGregor, known as “Jack” by his family and friends, was born in 1894, one of five children of John and Jessie McGregor of Ballarat, Victoria. Described as a well-built man with light blue eyes, dark brown hair, and freckled shoulders, McGregor attended Golden Point School in Ballarat and then worked as a labourer in the Bendigo region. He also served for four months in the Citizen’s Forces.

McGregor enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at Warragul in December 1915. After four months of training at the Broadmeadows Camp near Melbourne, he was transported to Egypt, where the AIF was undergoing a period of expansion and reorganisation in preparation for the fighting on the Western Front. Two months later, McGregor landed at Marseilles and headed for the Somme region in northern France.

On 15 July 1916, the 57th Battalion was preparing for the Battle of Fromelles, the first major Australian engagement on the Western Front. C Company, of which McGregor was part, came under heavy German shelling. C Company’s commander moved the troops to a safer section of the trenches, but left McGregor and another soldier in place to keep watch for a German attack. In a letter home to his uncle, McGregor wrote:
I was smothered in mud from the bursting shells and all my equipment was buried. The chap who was with me disappeared but I think he was called away anyway. I was there on my own, waiting to get blown to fragments. It was a funny thing Uncle I had been there for six hours and the trench[es] on both my right and left were blown in the parapet, knocked down, yet my part had not been touched. I heard [a German shell] coming and seemed to know it was going to burst near me. I stood straight up against the parapet. It exploded 8 feet away in front of me and blew me along the traverse, I got one piece [of shrapnel] in the shoulder
and cut on the back in a couple of places. It was like getting hit with a sledgehammer.

McGregor was hospitalised and sent to England for two months for recovery. Recognising his extraordinary luck, he wrote to his uncle that he intended to keep his torn and shrapnel-marked hat as a souvenir.

After his return to the front, McGregor continued to serve with the 57th Battalion, and was promoted, first to lance corporal, and then in December 1916 to sergeant.

In March 1917, the 57th Battalion was near Amiens, pursuing the Germans as they made a tactical retreat to the Hindenburg Line, a shortened and newly fortified series of defences on the Western Front. Australian troops seized Beaumetz-lés-Cambrai on 21 March, and for the next three days endured a series of bloody attacks as the Germans tried to retake the town. On 24 March, McGregor was killed instantly by a shot to the head while saving the life of a fallen comrade. He was 22 years old.

In a letter to McGregor’s father, Captain A.A. Fuller wrote:
It was, I believe, an impossible task he set himself, but he never thought of the danger. All he thought of was the man out there under a hail of machine gun and rifle fire … We all miss him as a sergeant, a friend, and a comrade, and I can safely say it was a splendid example of courage and coolness which carried the boys on during that awful day, and eventually won for us the German position.

Captain Trainor wrote in a Red Cross report of McGregor: “I wish to insert … [that] the casualty was the bravest and most courageous man I have ever had under me, and probably the … bravest man in the Australian Army”.

John McGregor was buried in a makeshift grave in the town of Beaumetz but his grave has never been found. His name is recorded on the Wall of Remembrance in the cemetery at Villers-Bretonneux.

After the war, McGregor’s older sister Mabel devoted great energy to finding out the particulars of her brother’s death and having him awarded a medal for his bravery. He was described as “a great favourite with everyone in the company”.

Sergeant John McGregor 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 Sergeant John McGregor, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

David Sutton
Historian, Military History Section

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