The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (5605) Sapper Lyle Ranger, 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, 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 Richard Cruise, the story for this day was on (5605) Sapper Lyle Ranger, 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, AIF, First World War.

5605 Sapper Lyle Ranger, 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, AIF
KIA 25 April 1917

Story delivered 7 January 2018

Today we remember and pay tribute to Sapper Lyle John Ranger.

Lyle Ranger was born in 1890, one of nine children of George and Sarah Ranger of Wallsend, near Newcastle in New South Wales. In the years before the war he attended Boolaroo Public School, paraded with the senior cadets at nearby Teralba, and worked as an apprentice tailor.

Ranger enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force as soon as he was old enough to do so. Aged 17 and 11 months, he sought his parents’ consent to enlist in the army in May 1916. After carrying out his initial training at the Newcastle AIF Camp, he was sent to Seymour in Victoria, where he spent several months training as a sapper for the newly-formed Mining Battalion. In October 1916, Lyle embarked for the training camps of England with a reinforcement group for the Australian Tunnelling Companies.

The tunnelling companies were formed in 1915 in response to the static conditions that characterised trench warfare on Gallipoli and the Western Front. While the infantry and artillery sought ways to break through the German lines above ground, engineers of the tunnelling companies dug underground saps and set explosive charges beneath the German trenches as a way of breaking the deadlock of the Western Front.

Lyle embarked for France in January 1917 as a reinforcement for the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, which was at that time secretly extending shafts for mines beneath a position known as Hill 60, south of Ypres in Belgium. This mine shaft, and the nearby mine at the Caterpillar, were two of 21 mines that British and Canadian tunnellers had secretly excavated beneath the Messines Ridge in preparation for a major offensive effort which sought to break through the Ypres Salient. The tunnellers spent most of their time underground in filthy, dark, waterlogged caverns, with the ever present risk of being buried in a tunnel collapse. Above ground, they were exposed to German artillery and mortar fire, making Hill 60 a bleak and miserable position to maintain. Given his pre-war training as a tailor, Lyle worked as a batman for one of the officers of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company. In this role, he would have kept his officer’s uniform and kit clean and tidy, cooked meals and acted as a runner.

Just after midday on 25 April 1917, a massive explosion ripped through the officers’ quarters occupied by the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company below Hill 60. It is not clear whether a German artillery shell landed on the position and caused the explosion, although there is some suggestion that a group of officers in the dugout were testing detonators for continuity while a 23-kilogram priming charge was being prepared for a 295-kilogram camouflet. Lyle was among the ten men who were killed in the explosion.

He was 18 years old.

His body was buried at the Railway Dugouts Burial Ground at nearby Ypres. A simple epitaph penned by his mother appears on his headstone: “He was loved by all”.

Lyle Ranger’s name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among almost 62,000 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 Sapper Lyle Ranger, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Aaron Pegram
Historian, Military History Section