The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (315) Lance Corporal Alfred Hehir, 44th 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 Jana Johnson , the story for this day was on (315) Lance Corporal Alfred Hehir, 44th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

315 Lance Corporal Alfred Hehir, 44th Battalion, AIF
DOW 25 June 1917

Story delivered 25 September 2017

Today we remember and pay tribute to Lance Corporal Alfred Hehir.

Alfred Hehir was born in Bendigo, Victoria, around 1881. Little is known of his early life. At some point he moved to Western Australia where he lived near the small village of Moora, not far from his brother Frederick. Alfred was well known in Moora and nearby Coomberdale, and played football for the local team. He volunteered for service with the 6th Mounted Contingent to the Boer War, leaving Australia in March 1901 and participating in heated skirmishes with the Boer guerrilla force before returning to Australia a little over a year later.

Alfred Hehir enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in March 1916. He was posted to the 44th Battalion and, after a period of training in Australia, embarked for active service overseas. He arrived in England in July 1916 and continued training on the Salisbury Plain, where he was promoted to lance corporal, before being sent to France to fight on the Western Front.

Lance Corporal Hehir arrived in France in late November 1916, and spent the next few months rotating in and out of the front line with his battalion. It was the coldest winter in several decades, and Hehir’s friend Corporal Jermyn later recalled, “many months of last we were in above our knees in mud and water, the cold unbearable. However, we got through all that until the memorable day the 7th of June, when we shook hands as we went into the battle of Messines.” On that day the 44th Battalion were able to capture their objectives with only a few casualties.

The 44th Battalion remained near Messines for some weeks after the battle, re-entering the front line on 22 June in order to relieve another battalion. In the early hours of 26 June, Hehir and Jermyn were talking in their trench in the pouring rain and knee deep in mud. They finished

their conversation and Hehir went about 30 yards away, when Jermyn heard a shell explode. He later wrote:
I heard the moans and hurried there to find to my horror it was my brave mate. He was looking over the parapet when the shell dropped right in front of him. He got six terrible gaping wounds, one bad one to his head. I bandaged him and helped to carry him two miles to the dressing station.

There was little anyone could do for Hehir, who died later that day. Jermyn wrote, “we fought side by side for eight solid months and went through thick and thin … we went through some terrible hardships, in fact too bad to describe; but we grinned and bore it all.”

In Australia a woman describing herself as Hehir’s “true friend”, Blanche Broad, placed a memorial notice in the local newspaper that read:
I pictured your safe returning
And longed to clasp your hand,
But God has postponed our meeting,
It will be in a better land.

Lance Corporal Alfred Hehir was buried in Kandahar Farm Cemetery. He was 36 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 Lance Corporal Alfred Hehir, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Meleah Hampton
Historian, Military History Section