The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (2199a) Lance Corporal Francis Stanislaus Ryan, 1st 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 Greg Kimball, the story for this day was on (2199a) Lance Corporal Francis Stanislaus Ryan, 1st Battalion, AIF, First World War.

2199a Lance Corporal Francis Stanislaus Ryan, 1st Battalion, AIF
KIA 23 August 1918
Story delivered 22 August 2018

Today we remember and pay tribute to Lance Corporal Francis Stanislaus Ryan.

Francis Ryan was born in 1887, one of six children of James and Catherine of Goolma, a small village community in Central West New South Wales near the town of Wellington. The Ryan family were well-known and respected members of the district who owned and ran a general store in Goolma.

Known to family and friends as “Frank”, Francis Ryan attended the local public school and boarded at St Stanislaus College in Bathurst before returning to Goolma where he and his older brothers ran the family business. Francis was also councillor at the Wyaldra Shire Council, where he was held in high regard.

Francis’s older brother, Ambrose, had enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in 1915 and would serve in France with the 8th Battalion. Perhaps motivated by his brother’s example, Francis followed suit in September 1916, enlisting in Bathurst one month before the first conscription plebiscite in Australia. After training as a mortar man, he sailed for England with a reinforcement group for the Light Trench Mortar brigades. He spent the following months carrying out further training on the Salisbury Plain in England, whereupon he was transferred to the 1st Battalion and sailed for France in November 1917.

Frank joined the 1st Battalion at Verlinghem on the Franco-Belgian boarder, just days after it had been relieved from the bitter fighting near Ypres where the Australians had suffered over 38,000 casualties in just eight weeks. Along with the rest of the 1st Australian Division, the 1st Battalion spent the following winter in the relatively quiet Messines sector where at one point Francis met his brother Ambrose and posed for a photograph in one of the rear area villages.

Francies went on to fight near the town of Strazeele during the German spring offensive in April 1918. He was promoted two months later, before participating in the counter-offensive that came when British and dominion forces broke through German lines at the Battle of Amiens. Throughout August 1918, Australian troops spearheaded the allied advance along the Somme River and were in contact with the retreating Germans almost on a daily basis. They were capturing more ground than any other time during the war, a sure sign that the fighting would not last for much longer.

In the early hours before dawn on 23 August 1918, two brigades of the 1st Australian Division participated in a successful assault on the German-occupied village of Chuignes. Attacking with the support of artillery and tanks, the infantry came under heavy machine-gun fire as they approached the German positions. These were outflanked and captured, but still inflicted a toll among the assaulting units.

Although a success, the 1st Battalion lost more than a hundred casualties during their attack on Chuignes. Among the 20 men killed in the attack was Lance Corporal Frank Ryan, aged 30, who is buried at Heath Cemetery near Harbonnieres. The historical records do not tell us how the Ryan family were affected by his death, so we can only imagine that both they and the small Goolma community were devastated by his loss.

His 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 Lance Corporal Francis Ryan, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Aaron Pegram
Historian, Military History Section