The AIF Project

Edward Rupert Emmerson GARRAWAY

Regimental number31218
Place of birthDrummoyne, New South Wales
SchoolChurch of England Grammar School, North Sydney, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLaw clerk
Address'Zeta', Stanley Street, Chatswood, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinMother, Mrs M E Garraway, 'Zeta', Stanley Street, Chatswood, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceSydney University Scouts; Nil
Enlistment date8 October 1916
Rank on enlistmentGunner
Unit nameDivisional Ammunition Column 5, Reinforcement 9
AWM Embarkation Roll number25/112/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board RMS Orontes on 19 December 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll12th Trench Mortar Battery
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted Sydney, Artillery, transferred temporarily in France to 12th Light Trench Mortar Battery.
FateKilled in Action 14 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death19.11
Age at death from cemetery records22
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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: Harold and Maria GARRAWAY, 'Ewell', Coonanbarra Road, Wahroonga, New South Wales. Native of Sydney
Family/military connectionsCousins: Corporal L.G. WILLIAMS, killed in action [cannot be further identified]; 3843 Gunner Alan Edward de Jonyn GARRAWAY, 3rd Field Artillery Brigade, died of wounds, 27 May 1918.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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