1st Light Horse Regiment AIF | Community

1st Light Horse Regiment AIF

Address: Parramatta 2150 Sydney, NSW, Australia

Website: www.australian-armour.com/ALH_1ALH.html

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23.01.2022 Lieutenant John Henry Asher, 11th Australian Field Artillery Brigade. Killed in Action 2nd of September 1917 Bailleul, France. John was born in Hurstville, a s...uburb of Sydney in 1890, the eldest child of Daniel and Hannah Asher. He attended Sydney Teachers’ Training College, before working as a School Teacher in Mittagong and then Dapto in New South Wales. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in August 1915 at age 24. Before embarkation in October he married his sweetheart Maisie Heath Rainbow. John enlisted as a Trooper in the 12th Australian Light Horse Regiment. He landed in Egypt just as the Gallipoli campaign was ending. After serving with the Light Horse for a short time, John was promoted to Second Lieutenant on the 27th of March 1916 and transferred to the 4th Division Artillery at Tel-el-Kebir Camp. On the 9th of April, he was posted to the 43rd Battery of the 11th Field Artillery Brigade at Serapeum. The unit went to France in early June 1916. John was promoted to Lieutenant on the 1st of October. Unfortunately tragedy struck the next year when the battery was stationed at Bailleul (near Messines Ridge) in France. At 10pm on the 2nd of September 1917, John and a few other officers were passing a building in the town just as a German plane flew over and dropped a bomb. The bomb hit the building sending shrapnel flying and causing the wall in which the officers were passing to collapse. John and his colleagues were buried in the rubble. Nearby troops quickly removed the wounded officers. John was still alive, although badly injured with a broken neck. He was rushed to the 53rd British Casualty Clearing Station, but died of his wounds a short time later, he was 27 years old. Lieutenant Asher is buried in the Bailleul Communal Cemetery Plot III, Row E, Grave 208. Extract from a letter to his mother dated the 3rd of November 1916: Rain and biting winds are adding to the hardships of everyone and more especially to the infantry, knee deep in slime and slush, wet to the skin, cheerless and wretched night and so the ball of time progresses. Numbed with the cold yet they keep good watch through the night as standing on the fire step they watch for the night terrors both known and unknown. Death in many forms faces them at every moment of the vigil - to be blown into an indescribable bloody mess by shells which would rip the very bowels out of Hell, to have brains splattered on the sandbag parapets and thence forward to become porge for uncivilised vermin, to suffer agonies in a gas attack or brave the certain bloom of liquid fire. To escape one danger another is courted, nowhere is immunity found....." Lest we Forget this Remembrance Day This photographic portrait was taken in London in 1916 or 1917, while on Leave.

18.01.2022 Head-dress for Heroes! The slouch hat and lemon-squeezer are, respectively, the very distinctive and recognisable headdress’ of the Australian and New Ze...aland Anzacs of the Great War. This Remembrance Day, the Families and Friends of the First AIF acknowledge the service and sacrifice of the men in the AIF and NZEF. The Australian slouch hat shown was made from rabbit pelt by Charles Anderson & Co. Ltd at the Federal Hat Mills, Surry Hills, Sydney. It is part of the uniform worn by 918 Leslie John 'Jack' Roberts Jones (1886-1970), an air mechanic with No 4 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps in France. Images courtesy the AWM and NZ Army Museum.

10.01.2022 To the Unknown British Soldier in France is an oil-on-canvas painting by Irish artist Sir William Orpen, exhibited in 1923 and then modified in 1927. A modern colourised photograph shows the Unknown Warrior later, lying-in-State in Westminster Abbey. Lest we Forget

10.01.2022 2020 Remembrance Day

07.01.2022 Join us for the live stream of the Remembrance Day commemoration at the Australian War Memorial. The ceremony will include the laying of wreaths and a minute's silence, under COVID-safe rules with a limited number of guests.

05.01.2022 Armistice Day The Armistice, an agreement to end the fighting of the First World War as a prelude to peace negotiations, began at 11am on 11 November 1918. Armi...stice is Latin for to stand (still) arms. To this day we mark Armistice Day with a Two Minute Silence at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month. See more