THE Australian War Memorial in Canberra will commemorate the service and sacrifice of Korumburra resident Pilot Officer Samuel Whiteside at the Last Post Ceremony on Saturday, March 29, 2025.
“Samuel Whiteside was born in Korumburra, Victoria, on June 28, 1910 and grew up in rural South Gippsland,” Australian War Memorial curator Emily Hyles said.
“Educated at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School and St Patrick’s College, by the outbreak of the Second World War he was working on the family dairy farm.”
Aged 30, Whiteside enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on June 4, 1941, then undertook training and received his navigator’s brevet on May 28, 1942.
By mid-November 1942, Whiteside was in Britain as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme.
He was posted to No. 460 Squadron RAAF at RAF Binbrook on September 15, 1943. On October 3, 1943, Whiteside and his crew flew “G for George” on the Lancaster’s 59th mission.
On the night of January 27, 1944, Whiteside’s crew in Lancaster JB 637 took off from RAF Binbrook to bomb Berlin but the aircraft did not return to base. Initially posted as missing, it was not until 1951 that the RAAF determined that Whiteside and his crew had been shot down by a German night fighter, crashing at Stuecken, south-west of Berlin. Whiteside was buried nearby, alongside his fellow crew members. He was 33 years old.
The Last Post ceremony is held at 4.30pm 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 3800 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 Pilot Officer Samuel Whiteside will be live streamed to the Australian War Memorial’s YouTube page: youtube.com/c/awmlastpost.
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.
