The AIF Project

Edward Wilson SANDERSON

Regimental number6385
Place of birthLowick, England
SchoolNational School, Lowick North, England
Age on arrival in Australia30
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationGardener
AddressWalching, Cranmore Park, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation27.6
Height5' 6"
Weight136 lbs
Next of kinFather, Charles Sanderson, Barmoor Cottage, Beal, Northumberland, England
Previous military serviceNil (previously rejected on account of weakeness, right leg, left side; no natural teeth)
Enlistment date20 October 1916
Place of enlistmentBlackboy Hill, Western Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name27th Battalion, 18th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/44/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A35 Berrima on 23 December 1916
Regimental number from Nominal Roll6385A
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll28th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 9 October 1917
Place of death or woundingFlanders
Age at death35
Age at death from cemetery records35
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
114
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Charles and Elizabeth SANDERSON, Barmoor Cottages, Beal, Northumberland, England. Native of Lowick, Northumberland
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, SANDERSON Edward Wilson

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