The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (1964) Private Nils Christian Pedersen, 27th Australian Infantry Battalion, AIF.

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 Richard Cruise, the story for this day was on (1964) Private Nils Christian Pedersen, 27th Australian Infantry Battalion, AIF.

1964 Private Nils Christian Pedersen, 27th Australian Infantry Battalion, AIF
KIA: 30 May 1918

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Nils Christian Pedersen.

Nils Christian Pedersen was born in about 1886 in Christiania, Norway – today known as Oslo. As a young man, he became a sailor, and worked on whaling ships off the coast of Greenland. He then began working on timber-carrying ships travelling between North America, England, and Australia.

While his ship was docked at Adelaide, Pedersen fell ill with typhoid and recovered in hospital in the city. While he recuperated, his ship left without him, and he decided to stay in Australia. “Peter”, as he was known in Australia, got a job with the Railways Department in Oodnadatta in the far north of the state.

In May 1915, Pedersen decided to enlist in the Australian Expeditionary Force in Adelaide. After a period of training, he embarked on board the transport ship Morea in August. In December, he joined the 27th Australian Infantry Battalion on Lemnos Island, while it was in the process of withdrawing from the Gallipoli peninsula. The unit moved to the training camps in Egypt in early January.

The 27th Battalion sailed to France and travelled to the north of the country, entering front-line trenches south of Armentieres. By late July, the unit had travelled south to the Somme sector of the front. There, it entered into its first battle at Pozieres. During an advance, a German shell exploded near Pedersen and shrapnel struck his right leg. He described the ordeal that followed in a letter to a friend in Adelaide :

“I tried to crawl back to our lines, but I lost my direction in a wood, which the enemy started to bombard. I took shelter in a shellhole, where I spent the night, and when daylight broke I found that I could not move. So I was forced to remain there all that day and night, and you cannot think how much I suffered. To make matters worse, my water bottle was smashed.”

Pedersen was eventually found by stretcher-bearers and evacuated to hospital, where the shrapnel was successfully removed from his leg. Medical authorities recommended that he be returned to Australia to recover, and he arrived in Adelaide in December 1916.

Pedersen had not been discharged from the army, however, and in June 1917, he sailed once more to the war on board the transport ship Borda. He arrived in England in August, and undertook training at the army camps on Salisbury Plain. There he trained into the new year. He sailed to France in April 1918, where he joined his new unit, the 10th Battalion.

In March of that year, German forces had launched what was to be their last major attack of the war, known as the German Spring Offensive. The 10th Battalion was involved in fighting against this assault in the northern part of the Western Front, near the border with Belgium.

By May, the German assault had lost its momentum, and the allied forces began to strike back, at first in a series of minor operations. The 10th Battalion took part in one of these on the 30th of May 1918 at Mont de Merris. Their goal was to capture the German posts opposite, and in doing so advance the line. The unit was successful in attaining its objectives, and then also held off three counter-attacks. At some point in the fighting, however, Pedersen was killed in action. He was 31 years old.
He was buried in La Kreule Military Cemetery, near Hazebrouck in northern France, alongside more than 500 other Commonwealth First World War burials and a small number of German war graves.

Private Nils Christian Pedersen 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 Nils Christian Pedersen, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Thomas Rogers
Historian, Military History Section