Wwi Bugle Will Make Return For Last Post

Illawarra Mercury

Tuesday April 25, 2006

By TREVOR HULM

A WORLD War I bugle that languished in an attic for 60 years will bring a special touch to the Anzac Day dawn service at Kiama today.

The bugle had been used to rally the troops on the bloody battlefields of France for four years before being brought home and consigned to its lofty hideaway in Sydney.

Richard Hoskins, of Kiama Downs, was presented with the bugle last December after its discovery in his aunt's attic.

"It was the loveliest Christmas present I ever received," Mr Hoskins said of the emotional handover.

"To think it had been unsighted for 60 years."

The bugle had been the constant battleground companion of his grandfather, Charles Hedley Hoskins, as he moved across the killing fields of France in 1914-18.

It will come into use for the first time since the Great War when Jamberoo bugler Warwick Sporne fills the early morning air with the haunting notes of The Last Post.

Mr Hoskins and his mother Val contacted Mr Sporne a couple of weeks ago and asked if he would play the bugle at the dawn service and other Anzac Day functions.

"I have long admired Warwick's talent and felt it would be wonderful if he would play it," Mrs Hoskins said.

The bugle, made in London by Besson and Co, is almost 100 years old. But Mr Sporne said the instrument produced a beautiful sound - "a typical bugle sound".

"It is just an honour to be asked to play an instrument with such tangible links to the First World War," he said.

Mrs Hoskins, her son and grand-daughter Natalie Rayes will be among those paying homage to the fallen at the 5.45am Kiama service.

Natalie, who served with the Navy in Timor, is the third generation of the family to see active service overseas. Her grandfather, John Charles Hoskins, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal in World War II.

Warrant Officer Hoskins, a wireless air gunner with the RAAF, was wounded after his Beaufort bomber was shelled and set on fire by a Japanese warship at Milne Bay in New Guinea in 1943.

WO Hoskins dragged himself through the turret of the fully-crewed plane to reach a fire extinguisher beside the badly wounded and disabled co-pilot.

He managed to extinguish the fire as the pilot frantically brought the crippled plane to safety in full view of dozens of Australian infantrymen.

The DFM recognising his bravery under fire was one of only about 600 ever awarded.

WO Hoskins suffered severe burns and had bullet wounds to the chest and ankle. He was repatriated to Sydney, where he met the future Mrs Hoskins, a nursing orderly at Concord Hospital.

"He was in hospital more than a year and still had pieces of shrapnel in his body until his death 18 months ago," Mrs Hoskins said.

© 2006 Illawarra Mercury

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