The Australian War Memorial in Canberra will be commemorating the service and sacrifice of Kangaroo Island resident Flight Sergeant Douglas George Barrett at the Last Post Ceremony on Friday 11 July 2025.
“Douglas Barrett was born on 7 October 1917 on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, the second of two sons born to George Barrett and Jane Turner,” Australian War Memorial curator Emily Hyles said.
“The family later moved to Tarlee and Douglas attended the Riverton Public School.”
Barrett enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) on 28 June 1941 and was called up for service in February 1942. After months of training, on 9 January 1943 he embarked at Adelaide for overseas service in Britain as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme.
On 27 August 1943, Flight Sergeant Douglas Barrett was posted to No. 44 Squadron, Royal Air Force, where his crew completed 11 operations to bomb targets in German-occupied Europe over the next few months.
On 25 November, Barrett was posted to No. 463 Squadron, RAAF, part of Bomber Command’s No. 5 Group, which conducted night-time bombing raids over Germany.
On the night of 27 January 1944, during Barrett’s 7th sortie with his squadron, his aircraft went missing during a raid on Berlin. An investigation later revealed that Lancaster JO-L was caught in heavy anti-aircraft fire and exploded in mid-air, the wreckage crashing 16 km south-west of Berlin. None of the seven crew members survived. Douglas Barrett was 26 years old.
The Last Post ceremony is held at 4.30 pm every day except Christmas Day in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial.
Each ceremony shares the story behind one of 103,000 names on the Roll of Honour. To date, the Memorial has delivered more than 3,800 ceremonies, each featuring an individual story of service from colonial to recent conflicts. It would take more than 280 years to read the story behind each of the 103,000 names listed on the Roll of Honour.
“The Last Post Ceremony is our commitment to remembering and honouring the legacy of Australian service,” Memorial Director Matt Anderson said.
“Through our daily Last Post Ceremony, we not only acknowledge where and how these men and women died. We also tell the stories of who they were when they were alive, and of the families who loved and, in so many cases, still mourn for them.
“The Last Post is now associated with remembrance but originally it was a bugle call to sound the end of the day’s activities in the military. It is a fitting way to end each day at the Memorial.”
The Last Post Ceremony honouring the service of Flight Sergeant Douglas George Barrett will be live streamed to the Australian War Memorial’s YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/
The stories told at the Last Post Ceremony are researched and written by the Memorial’s military historians, who begin the process by looking at nominal rolls, attestation papers and enlistment records before building profiles that include personal milestones and military experiences.
