The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (1687) Private Joseph Watkins, 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 (1687) Private Joseph Watkins, First World War.

1687 Private Joseph Watkins, First World War.

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Joseph Watkins.
Joseph Herbert Watkins was born in 1897, the son of John and Eunice Watkins of the Newcastle suburb of Wallsend in New South Wales. At Wallsend Superior School he was involved in senior cadets, as required by the Universal Military Training scheme at the time. After leaving school, he worked as a wheelwright, most likely at the Wallsend colliery, a major employer in the area at that time.
Watkins enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in Newcastle in July 1915, and after a period of training at Liverpool Military Camp, sailed for Egypt as an original member of the 30th Battalion in November 1915, bound for the Dardanelles. The fighting on Gallipoli had ended by the time the troopship arrived, so the battalion spent the following months training in camps around Cairo in preparation for its deployment to the Western Front. No sooner had Watkins arrived in Egypt, than he was hospitalised with an illness and spent the following months recovering in hospital in Cairo, before re-joining the battalion at Tel-el-Kebir in March 1916.
The 30th Battalion spent the following months occupying posts along the Suez Canal, and training in preparation for their departure for the Western Front.
The 30th Battalion had been in France for just two weeks before it was committed to its first major operation in the new theatre.

On the night of 19/20 July 1916, the battalion took part in the costly and unsuccessful action at Fromelles near the Belgian border. Watkin’s company had been used to bring stores and engineering supplies up the line to consolidate the captured German positions; but the company was ultimately used as reinforcements as the situation became increasingly more desperate. Watkins received a gunshot wound to the jaw, and was fortunate in that he was either evacuated or made his way back across to the Australian positions before the Germans delivered their counter-attacks. Watkins was evacuated to the 13th Stationary Hospital near Boulogne, and did not return to the battalion until October. By then, the 30th Battalion, which had remained in the Fromelles area, was preparing to join other Australian units further south on the Somme to hold positions throughout the fighting over the coming winter.
By late November, the 30th Battalion had taken up positions in the Gueudecourt sector and was held in reserve near Needle Dump outside the village of Ginchy. By then, winter had well and truly set in. Terrain churned by months of shell-fire turned into a morass when the rain came. Over time, the mud, rain and frostbite became far greater enemies than the Germans, who continued to shell the Australian positions throughout the winter months.
Joseph Watkins was killed on 26 November 1916, most likely by shell-fire, in what the battalion war diary records was a fairly quiet day that resulted in three men wounded. He was 19 years old, and his body was never recovered from the Gueudecourt battlefield. His name is one of those listed on the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux among 10,737 Australians killed in France who have no known grave.

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 Private Joseph Herbert Watkins, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.