Edgar Reginald PACKER

Regimental number353
Place of birthBasket Range, South Australia
Place of birthAdelaide, South Australia
SchoolBasket Range Public School, South Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationTeamster
AddressWaikerie, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation26
Next of kinMother, Mrs Elizabeth Packer, Basket Range, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date18 January 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name43rd Battalion, B Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/60/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A19 Afric on 9 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll43rd Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularThe only eligible son of his family, he was 'highly respected'.
FateKilled in Action 31 July 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death28
Age at death from cemetery records27
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
137
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Job and Elizabeth PACKER, Basket Range, South Australia
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Adelaide, 9 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 20 July 1916; proceeded to England.

Proceeded overseas to France, 25 November 1916.

Admitted to 7th General Hospital, St Omer, 28 December 1916 (mumps); rejoined unit, 19 January 1917.

Wounded in action, 30 June 1917 (gun shot wound, head); admitted to 83rd General Hospital Boulogne, 1 July 1917; rejoined unit, 27 July 1917.

Killed in action, 31 July 1917

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal