The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (4889) Private Donald Ewen Ross, 56th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

Places
Accession Number AWM2018.1.1.13
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 13 January 2018
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 Joanne Smedley, the story for this day was on (4889) Private Donald Ewen Ross, 56th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

Film order form
Speech transcript

4889 Private Donald Ewen Ross, 56th Battalion, AIF
KIA 20 July 1916
Story delivered 13 January 2018

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Donald Ross.

Donald Ewan Ross was born in 1874, one of ten children of Alexander and Mary Ross of Penshurst in Victoria. He attended Penshurst State School and afterwards became a grazier. Around 1907 he took up a selection at Deer Vale near Dorrigo in the New South Wales Northern Tablelands. It is likely that he worked it as a dairy and ran maize and a few cereal crops. According to a newspaper article printed nine years later, Donald was “well known and his worth as a resident appreciated” within the rural Dorrigo community.

Donald enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at Liverpool near Sydney in October 1915. After a period of training at Holsworthy Camp, he embarked for Egypt with a reinforcement group for the 4th Battalion. By the time he arrived in April 1916, the Gallipoli campaign was over, and the Australian force was undergoing a major restructure before it embarked for the fighting in France. As part of the “doubling-up” of the AIF, Donald was transferred to the newly-formed 56th Battalion, in camp at Ferry Post on the Suez Canal. He spent the following weeks training with his new unit before it embarked for France in April 1916.

Along with the rest of the 5th Division, the 56th Battalion entered the trenches of the Western Front for the first time outside the village of Fleurbaix on the Franco-Belgian border. Its flat terrain and high water table made the area unsuitable for any major offensive action, so both the British and the Germans treated it as a “nursery” to train new units arriving in France. But although the focus of British operations by this time was further to the south on the Somme, the inexperienced troops of the 5th Division were committed to a feint attack in the Fleurbaix sector after just two weeks in France.

On the afternoon of 19 July 1916, Australian and British troops assaulted the German trenches outside the village of Fromelles. In a costly and unsuccessful endeavour, the 5th Division suffered over 5,500 casualties – killed, missing, wounded, and taken prisoner – in less than 24 hours of fighting. Among the casualties was Donald Ross, who was killed outright by a German artillery shell that exploded in an Australian communication trench early on the morning of 20 July. Aged 41 at the time of his death, Donald was buried at the Anzac Cemetery at the nearby village of Sailly-sur-la-Lys.

His death was keenly felt within the small rural farming community of Dorrigo, where his name appears on the local war memorial.

Donald Ross is also 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 Private Donald Ewan Ross, 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 (4889) Private Donald Ewen Ross, 56th Battalion, AIF, First World War. (video)