The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (4177) Private Albert Henry Denne, 9th 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 Sharon Bown, the story for this day was on (4177) Private Albert Henry Denne, 9th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

4177 Private Albert Henry Denne, 9th Battalion, AIF
KIA 23 July 1916
Story delivered 26 October 2018

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Albert Henry Denne.

Albert Denne was born in 1891, the son of Henry and Margaret Denne of Camberwell in London. After attending London County Council School in Southwark, Albert studied engineering until the Denne family emigrated to Australia, and went to live at Kaimkillenbun, near Dalby in southern Queensland. There, Denne worked as a grocer’s assistant in the years before the war.

Denne enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at Dalby in August 1915. After a period of training in Brisbane, he embarked for Egypt with a reinforcement group for the 9th Battalion. They were destined for the Dardanelles, but the fighting on Gallipoli had ended by the time he arrived, and so spent the following months training near Cairo in preparation for the 9th Battalion’s deployment to the Western Front.

Sailing for France in March 1916, the 9th Battalion were among the first Australian troops to arrive on the Western Front, and were filed into the trenches near the town of Armentieres. In this relatively quiet sector, the Australians patrolled no man’s land at night and carried out trench raids on the German positions until being moved south to the Somme in early July to take part in the battle of the Somme.

The 9th Battalion fought its first major action on the Western Front at Pozieres on the night of 22/23 July 1916. The battalion assaulted and captured a significant part of the Somme battlefield amid extremely heavy German machine-gun and artillery fire. Victory came as a cost, as the 1st Division suffered more than 5,000 casualties in less than three days of bitter fighting.

Among the 9th Battalion’s 216 casualties was Albert Denne, aged 23, who was listed as being killed in action. His body was never recovered from the battlefield, and today his name is listed on the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, among 10,737 Australians killed in France who have no known grave.

Albert Denne 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 Private Albert Henry Denne, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Aaron Pegram
Historian, Military History Section