The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (1403) Lance Corporal Edward Molloy Roberts, 51st 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 Tristan Rallings, the story for this day was on (1403) Lance Corporal Edward Molloy Roberts, 51st Battalion, AIF, First World War.

1403 Lance Corporal Edward Molloy Roberts, 51st Battalion, AIF
KIA 3 September 1916

Story delivered 22 June 2018

Today we remember and pay tribute to Lance Corporal Edward Molloy Roberts.

Edward Roberts was born in 1880, the eldest son of Thomas and Ellen Roberts of Bendigo in Victoria. After school, Roberts worked in one of the area’s gold mines until finding similar work on the Kalgoorlie goldfields in Western Australia, where he lived in the years before the war. There he also paraded part-time with the local militia, the Goldfields Infantry Regiment.

Roberts enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in November 1914. After a period of training at the Blackboy Hill training camp, he embarked for Egypt with a reinforcement group for the 11th Battalion. Roberts spent the following months training at Mena Camp near Cairo, before landing on Gallipoli three days after his battalion had come ashore. Roberts participated in the major actions fought by the battalion on the peninsula until an ulcer on this eye led to his evacuation to Egypt for a period in hospital. Roberts rejoined the battalion on Lemnos in November, after which it evacuated from Gallipoli and returned to Egypt.

The 11th Battalion spent the following months training in Egypt while the AIF underwent a period of major reorganisation in preparation for the fighting on the Western Front. Roberts was transferred to the newly-raised 51st Battalion, sailing for France with his new battalion in June 1916. The 51st Battalion entered the line for the first time near the town of Armentieres on the Franco-Belgian border, where it patrolled no man’s land at night and conducted trench raids on the German positions.

In July 1916, Australian troops of the 4th Division, which included the men of the 51st Battalion, moved south to take part in the British offensive then raging on the Somme. The battalion’s first major action was at Pozieres on the 4th of August 1916, where it repelled a German counter-attack from recently captured positions east of the village. Soon after, the focus of Australian operations in the Pozieres sector shifted several hundred metres north towards Mouquet Farm, where the Australians carried out a series of attacks in an effort to gain ground. Roberts had by this stage been promoted to lance corporal.

Roberts was listed as missing in action following the Australians’ final assault on Mouquet Farm on 3 September 1916. Small numbers of men from the 51st Battalion had succeeded in fighting their way into the network of underground cellars beneath Mouquet Farm where they became locked in a fierce bombing duel with German troops. Nobody knew what had become of him after that action, and the Red Cross received no news that he had been taken prisoner of war.

Roberts remained missing until a court of inquiry determined that he had been killed in action in the bitter fighting on 3 September. His body was never recovered from the battlefield, and today name is listed on the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux alongside over 10,030 Australians killed in France who have no known grave.

His family inserted a small memorial notice in the local newspaper after receiving the news Roberts had been killed. It read simply: “His duty nobly done”.
Edward Roberts was 36 years old.

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 Edward Molloy Roberts, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Aaron Pegram
Historian, Military History Section