Significance of WW1 - The Last Post — Music Through Time | Social Studies

Welcome to another post on my blog. Today, I completed the third post of the Music Through Time unit about the ANZACs arriving in ANZAC Cove battling the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. After learning and adding information about the Gallipoli Campaign. We need to research the battles during the Gallipoli Campaign, such as the Battle of Krithia. After, we had to listen and watch the Last Post and the Gallipoli Dawn Service.

We hear the Last Post on ANZAC Day, which occurs annually on 25 April, is played to remember the ANZAC (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) soldiers who lost their lives during the war. 

The history of the last post takes back many years back when Arthur Lane, a burglar in the British Army when he was captured by the Japanese forces during the fall of Singapore in 1942. He spent the remaining of World War II in PoW (Prisoner-of-War) camps and working on the infamous Burma railway. He still had his bugle with him and it was his task to sound the Last Post for each of his co-workers who died during those years. For the rest of his long life, he was haunted by nightmares. And he never played the Last Post again.

The sound of a solitary bugler playing the Last Post has become one of the most unique sounds in the world. The Last Post was published in the 1790s, with one of the two dozen or so bugle calls sounded daily in the British Army camps. 

Colin Dean, archivist at the Museum of Army Music in Kneller Hall says, "At that time soldiers didn't have wristwatches, so they had to be regulated in camp. They had to have a trumpet call or a bugle call to tell them when to get up, when to have their meals, when to fetch the post, when to get on parade, when to go to bed and all other things throughout the day."

This bugle call also signifies the end of the day's activities. This is now played at commemorative services such as Anzac Day and Remembrance Day (UK & Europe).