Claud Mason, of O’Halloran Hill, killed in action during WWI and will be honoured with a Last Post ceremony this month

An ancestor of a fallen WWI digger from O’Halloran Hill is searching for his relatives in the hope they will attend the soldier’s Last Post ceremony this month.

Last Post ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

AN ANCESTOR of a fallen WWI digger is searching for his relatives in the hope they will attend the soldier’s Last Post ceremony this month.

Gordon Keane, of Canberra, is trying to find more descendants of Claud Mason, who are believed to be living on the Eyre and Yorke pensinsulas.

Mason, of O’Halloran Hill, was killed in action on the first day of the battle of Amiens on August 8, 1918.

He died aged 23 during the allied advance on the German front line.

The digger will be honoured with a Last Post ceremony at the Australian War Memorial, in Canberra, on May 17.

Mr Keane, 81, is appealing for any of his family to attend this “once-off” and “moving” event.

“I haven’t had a great deal of contact with my mother’s side of the family, so the purpose is to try and let people know this is on,” Mr Keane says.

“It is a one-off event and can never be repeated.

“It is a very sombre, moving ceremony about remembering the sacrifices and what these people put themselves through on our behalf.”

Before Mason’s death, he had been fighting alongside Mr Keane’s father, Theodre, of Happy Valley.

The two men were related through marriage and served together in the 48th Battalion.

They were involved in the first battle of Bullecourt, in France, 1917 – the attack on German positions resulted in 3300 Allied casualties and 1170 Australian soldiers being taken prisoner.

Mr Keane said both men refused to divulge to their families the horrors facing them on the Western Front.

In letters to Mr Keane’s mother from her husband, Theodre, and her cousin, Mason, news of the battle were minor in detail, in a guess to save the family from their anguish.

“The large battle at Bullecourt saw almost four out of every five soldiers become a casualty,” Mr Keanesays.

“All my father wrote about it to my mother was that they had been kept very busy and it was cold out in the snow.

“I get the impression they really didn’t want to talk about those things to their family.”

Mr Keane’s father survived the war, sadly to return home without his mate, Mason, who is buried in the Heath Cemetery at Harbonnieres, France.

The Last Post ceremony is at 4.50pm each afternoon and includes a short account of the life of a fallen digger, followed by the Ode and a bugler playing the Last Post.

It can be watched online at: awm.gov.au/events/last-post-ceremony

Originally published as Claud Mason, of O’Halloran Hill, killed in action during WWI and will be honoured with a Last Post ceremony this month