Captain Keith Heritage MC

20 March 2017

Keith Heritage was born in 1882, one of eight children of George and Eleanora Heritage of Longford in Tasmania. His father was an inspector at the Tasmanian Department of Education. Having attended state school at Longford and Invermay, Keith was a well-known oarsman, rowing in a winning crew that competed in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, and Henley in England. Heritage was named as a reserve for the Stockholm Olympics in 1912.

He also paraded with the Tasmanian Infantry Regiment, where he held the rank of colour sergeant in its machine-gun section. In the years before the First World War he lived in Sydney, where he worked as a traffic manager of the Union Steam Ship Company.

According to a report by the Department of Defence in 1920, Keith Heritage was the first man to volunteer for the new Australian force to be sent in aid of Britain’s war effort.[1] and [2] On the 14th of August he was commissioned into the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force with the rank of lieutenant and sailed within days for New Britain. There he served as supply and transport officer to the British Administration in Rabaul as the ANMEF secured the capture of German colonies in the South Pacific.

Heritage returned to Australia in early 1915, and later joined the newly formed 19th Battalion as a lieutenant. The battalion landed on Gallipoli in August and served there until the evacuation, after which it was sent to the Western Front.

After several months in Egypt, Heritage, now promoted to captain with the 19th Battalion, was given command of a raiding party near Amentières [pron. Amen – tee – air] in June 1916.[3] The group made it into the German trenches, where it blew up two bomb stores and took four prisoners.[4] In the same action Heritage single-handedly carried a wounded man back to the Australian trenches through an intense bombardment. He was the last man of the party to leave the hostile trench and was awarded the Military Cross for his conspicuous gallantry, dash, and leadership.

On the night of the 26th of July 1916 Heritage was in the trenches with the 19th Battalion at Pozières [pron. Pozzy – air]. While making his rounds he noticed that two of the soldiers on guard looked very tired. He told them to get a few hours’ sleep, and took up their watch. He also gave them some of his own food, which was in short supply owing to blocked supply routes. As the two men lay down to rest nearby, a large high-explosive shell landed near Captain Heritage, killing him almost immediately.[5]

Keith Heritage’s family and friends had heard the news of his award only days before news of his death reached Australia. His sister, a nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Auburn, Sydney, was celebrating her brother’s award by wearing the colours of the 19th Battalion at work. As she was dressing a patient one day she noticed a paragraph in a newspaper announcing the death of her brother. She collapsed in shock.[6]

Keith Heritage was the only one of five brothers serving on the Western Front to die. His brother Francis Bede Heritage had served alongside him in New Britain as brigade major of the ANMEF. He also went on to serve on the Western Front, where he was awarded a French Croix de Guerre. Following the war he would, after a period as commandant at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, be promoted to Army Quarter Master General.

Austin and Robert Heritage also served on the Western Front. Austin, like Keith, was awarded the Military Cross for bravery in action. Both returned home to Australia. Stanley Heritage, who had been working in the United States at the start of the war, went north and joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Keith Heritage’s name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, along with more than 60,000 others from the First World War, and his photograph is displayed today beside the Pool of Reflection.

This is but one of the many stories of courage and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Captain Keith Heritage MC, and all of those Australians who have given their lives in service of our nation.

Portrait of Keith Heritage. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had the concession to take photographs at the Broadmeadows and Seymour army camps during the First World War. In the 1930's, the Australian War Memorial purchased the original glass negatives from Algernon Darge, along with the photographers' notebooks. The notebooks contain brief details, usually a surname or unit name, for each negative. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks.