The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (114) Trooper Wilfred Lukin Harper, 10th Australian Light Horse, 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 (114) Trooper Wilfred Lukin Harper, 10th Australian Light Horse, First World War.

114 Trooper Wilfred Lukin Harper, 10th Australian Light Horse Regiment
KIA 7 August 1915
Photograph: P07183.002

Today we remember and pay tribute to Trooper Wilfred Lukin Harper.

Wilfred Harper was born in 1890, the youngest son among Charles and Fanny Harper’s ten children. Wilfred’s father Charles was a prominent figure in Western Australia, and had variously been an explorer, pearler, farmer, and member of parliament. Charles’s extensive interests led him to engage in projects from wheat breeding to journalism, including the establishment of Guildford Grammar School. Young Wilfred Harper followed his older brothers in becoming a student of Guildford Grammar.

However, while Wilfred’s brothers were more academically inclined – including in their ranks a barrister and a Rhodes Scholar – Wilfred was more interested in agricultural pursuits. After his schooling, he worked on properties at Gingin and Balingup. He enjoyed sports, and played grade cricket with his brother Gresley.

On the 5th of October 1914 Wilfred, his older brother Gresley, and his cousin Geoffrey Lukin went together to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force. Gresley and Wilfred were given consecutive service numbers, and were posted to the 10th Light Horse Regiment.

The Harper brothers left Alexandria with their regiment in May 1915, bound for the Gallipoli peninsula. They disembarked at Anzac Cove on the 21st of May, towed ashore as Turkish shells hit the water around them. Over the next few weeks they spent so much time with their picks and shovels that Gresley Harper joked that on their return to Australia, they would apply for work on the Transcontinental railway and would “rush through it in double-quick time”.

In early August 1915, the men of the 10th Light Horse Regiment were ordered to prepare to attack Turkish trenches at the Nek. On 7 August, following an ineffective artillery barrage, the men of the 8th Light Horse attacked the Turkish trenches and were mown down by machine-gun fire. Despite the enormous casualties in the first two waves of light horsemen, the men of the 10th Light Horse Regiment were then ordered to carry out their orders immediately and capture the Turkish trenches at the Nek. They, too, were mown down by withering machine-gun fire. A fourth wave, again of the 10th Light Horse, advanced with the same result.

Wilfred Harper and his brother Gresley were two of the men who rushed out of the trenches into certain death. Charles Bean recorded that Wilfred was last seen “running forward like a schoolboy in a foot-race, with all the speed he could compass”. This short account of Wilfred Harper later inspired Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli. But speed could not save Trooper Harper that day. He and Gresley were killed on the 7th of August 1915 at the Nek.

Neither of their bodies was identified, and today they have no known grave. They are both commemorated on the Lone Pine Memorial at Anzac Cove, and here – where their names are listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among more than 60,000 Australians who died during 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 Trooper Wilfred Lukin Harper, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Meleah Hampton
Historian, Military History Section