The AIF Project

Robert Albert FEATHERSTONHAUGH-WOOSTER

Regimental number2809
SchoolState School
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationShop assistant
AddressCabal Street, Railwaytown, Broken Hill, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation31
Height5' 4.5"
Weight142 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs Annie Cora Featherstonhaugh-Wooster, 200 Rowe Street, Railway Town, Broken Hill, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date28 October 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name43rd Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/60/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A35 Berrima on 16 December 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll43rd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingBelgium
Age at death31
Age at death from cemetery records31
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), Belgium

The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave.

The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936.

Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.

Panel number, Roll of Honour,
  Australian War Memorial
136
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Henry and Annie Cora FEATHERSTONHAUGH-WOOSTER, 200 Rowe Street, Railway Town, Broken Hill, New South Wales. Native of Adelaide
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Adelaide, 16 December 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 16 February 1917; marched in to 2nd Training Bn, Durrington, 19 February 1917.

AIF Administrative Headquarters, London, informed Base Records, Melbourne, 14 March 1917, that 'All documents of this man in this Office have been endorsed "FEATHERSTONEHAUGH-WOOSTER" KNOWN AS "FEATHERSTONEHAUGH".'

Proceeded overseas to France, 2 July 1917; taken on strength, 43rd Bn, in the field, 18 July 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 4 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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