Edward HACKWOOD

Regimental number4813
Place of birthWarwick, Queensland
SchoolState School, Queensland
ReligionMethodist
OccupationLabourer
AddressGilford Street, Warwick, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Height5' 7"
Weight150 lbs
Next of kinFather, A H Hackwood, Gilford Street, Warwick, Queensland
Previous military serviceServed in the Cadets, B Company, for 4 years.
Enlistment date23 September 1915
Place of enlistmentToowoomba, Queensland
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name15th Battalion, 15th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/32/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A73 Commonwealth on 28 March 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll4th Light Trench Mortar Battery
FateDied of wounds 20 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records23
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
20
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Albert and Jemina HACKWOOD. Native of Warwick, Queensland
Family/military connectionsTwo uncles and three counsins, including 1068 Pte James Howe SHARP, 4th Bn, died of wounds, Gallipoli, 26 April 1915.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Disembarked Egypt, 5 May 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 6 August 1916; disembarked England. Proceeded overseas to France, 23 September 1916. taken on strength, 15th Bn, 4 October 1916.

Transferred to 4th Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery, 18 May 1917.

Wounded in action, 19 October 1917; subsequently reported 'wounded in action and missing; Court of Inquiry, 20 March 1918, determined fate as 'died of wounds received in action'. Witness, 4780 Corporal C.A. DAVEY, 4th Light Trench Mortar Battery, gave evidence to the Court: 'At about 7.30 on the night of the 19.10.17. I saw Pte Hackwood of our Battery lying wounded outside our Battery H.Qrs. after a 1st Field Dressing had been applied by Capt Potts and some other men, I assisted in carrying Hackwood on a stretcher to a Relay Post about quarter of a mile distant. We had a difficult job getting him there as the country was torn up considerably by shell fire and was boggy. He was unconscious the whole time I saw him. We handed him into the Relay Post at that time in the charge of the 12th F.A.B. On the following morning I noticed the steel helmet worn by Hackwood at the time he was wounded, had a large gash in it about 3 inches long and was smothered in blood.' The Court found 'That No. 4813 A.E. Hackwood of the 4th Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery was admitted severely wounded to the Relay Post near 4th Australian Infantry Brigade Headquarters, in chage of the 12th F.A.B., and that he died of his wounds there early on the morning of the 20th October 1917. No evidence has been brought before the Court as to the burial of the body.'

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, HACKWOOD Edward