The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (404484) Flight Sergeant Graham Henry David Higgins, No. 78 Squadron, RAF, Second 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 Joanne Smedley, the story for this day was on (404484) Flight Sergeant Graham Henry David Higgins, No. 78 Squadron, RAF, Second World War.

404484 Flight Sergeant Graham Henry David Higgins, 78 Squadron, RAF
Flying Battle 11 August 1942

Today we remember and pay tribute to Flight Sergeant Graham Henry David Higgins.

Graham Higgins was born on 9 March 1914 in Clermont, Queensland, to John and Margaret Higgins. Graham went to Clermont and Toowong Convent Schools before attending St Ignatius College in Riverview, Sydney. Completing his education Graham returned north to Queensland and began working as a school teacher at St Lucius in Brisbane.

Graham Higgins enlisted into the Royal Australian Air Force on 13 September 1940, and after receiving three months of basic training in Australia, embarked for Canada to join the Empire Air Training Scheme. The Empire Air Training Scheme was a joint British and Dominion program designed to ensure that enough trained airmen were available to keep up with demand for the war in Europe. Graham trained in Canada for months, and wrote home to his family of the beauty of the country and the kindness of the people he met there.

He was eventually transferred into the 78th Squadron of the Royal Air Force, and served as a navigator in the squadron’s Halifax aircraft. Halifax aircraft were eight-man crew long-range bombers used to carry out large scale operations over Germany and occupied Europe.

On 11 August 1942 Graham and the 78th Squadron took part in a 158 aircraft raid on the city of Mainz in Germany, an important port on the River Rhine. Graham’s W1233 Halifax aircraft successfully took off from the Middleton, St George base in England at 9.39 in the evening, but was never seen again. A report from a pilot who survived the mission in another aircraft reported heavy anti-aircraft fire on the outward journey, but the exact fate of Graham’s plane is unknown.

The body of one of the crew members, Canadian Pilot Officer John Myrick, washed ashore in Denmark, but the rest of the crew was never found. It was assumed that the aircraft had crashed somewhere in the North Sea. Due to the uncertain nature of the events, Graham’s family did not receive confirmation of his death until mid-1943. The grieving Higgins family devoted great energy to trying to find out anything they could about Graham’s death. In a letter to the father of John Myrick, Graham’s Canadian crewmember whose body was found, Graham’s mother noted that she knew very little and wrote: “I am appealing to you to write and give me any information that you can on the matter, the tension of not knowing whether our sons are dead or alive is heartbreaking. I am sure you feel the same”.

Today Graham Higgins is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey, England, along with 20,000 airmen lost in the Second World War who have no known grave.

His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my left, among some 40,000 Australians who died while serving in the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Flight Sergeant Graham Henry David Higgins, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

David Sutton
Historian, Military History Section