The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of Lieutenant Robert David Burns, 14th Australian Machine Gun 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 Lieutenant Robert David Burns, 14th Australian Machine Gun Company, AIF, First World War.

Lieutenant Robert David Burns, 14th Australian Machine Gun Company, AIF
KIA 20 July 1916
Story delivered 19 July 2018

Today we remember and pay tribute to Lieutenant Robert David Burns.
Robert Burns was born on 6 April 1888 in the inner-Sydney suburb of Potts Point, the youngest son of Colonel Sir James and Mary Burns. The Burns were a prominent Australian family. Roberts’s father was the Chairman of Directors at Burns Philip & Co, one of the biggest trading companies in the Pacific, and former commander of the New South Wales Lancers, the militia unit that would become the 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade with the advent of the Great War. Prior to enlistment Burns worked as a station manager at Gowan-Brae, Parramatta.

He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in May 1915 at Holsworthy. He trained and served with the 4th Light Horse Brigade in Australia and Egypt, and in August 1915 embarked for the fighting on Gallipoli. He arrived at the front towards the end of the campaign, where he endured the hardships of the war of attrition, and the increasingly cold and wet conditions as winter set in. Burns withdrew with Australian forces in December 1915, and arrived back in Egypt on Christmas Day.

After Gallipoli, the Australian Imperial Force underwent a period of intense growth and reorganisation in Egypt in preparation for the war in Europe. Burns underwent machine-gun training and transferred through a number of units, eventually joining the 14th Machine Gun Company. In June 1916, he sailed from Alexandria to Marseilles in France.

After less than a month in France, Burns took part in the Battle of Fromelles, Australia’s first major engagement on the Western Front. The attack began at 6 pm after after a seven hour bombardment. In boggy conditions, Australian troops on the left flank successfully captured German trenches. Troops on the right, however, suffered devastating casualties from German defences not severely affected by the preceding artillery barrage. The remaining Australian forces were now threatened by an exposed flank and endured German counterattacks, one at dusk, and another at 1 am. In the nighttime and morning fighting, Australian troops were forced to retire across no-man’s-land. The battle cost over 5,500 Australian dead, wounded, missing, and taken prisoner.

Burns advanced into no-man’s-land with the 4th wave of infantry attacks. He took part in the nighttime battle, and was seen alive on the morning of the 20th, slightly wounded but still fighting. In the chaos of the fight, Burns was ordered to withdraw, but opted to fight on and assist other machine-gun teams. After becoming surrounded, he destroyed his machine gun to ensure it did not fall into German hands and attempted to lead his team back to the Australian lines. He was never seen again. He was 28 years old.

Due to their chaotic and confused nature of the fighting, Burns was originally pronounced missing in action. However, in March 1917, his family received confirmation that he had been killed when James Burns recieved his son’s identity disc through the Red Cross. Burns’s father devoted great energy to find out details of his son’s fate. His search, however, was unsuccessful, and Burns’s name was listed on the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneaux, along with nearly 11,000 Australian soldiers who have no known grave.

In 2008, Australian researches located a mass grave containing the remains of 250 British and Australian soldiers near the Fromelles battleground. Burns’s body was able to be identified, and he finally found his resting place in the new Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Cemetery, which officially opened in 2010. His father’s long search for his son finally ended, and his grave now reads: “Remembered with pride”.

Lieutenant Robert David Burns 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 Lieutenant Robert David Burns, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

David Sutton
Historian, Military History Section