The AIF Project

Edward James RICHARDSON

Regimental number2421
Place of birthPetma, South Australia
ReligionMethodist
OccupationFarmer
AddressPayneham, South Australia
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation34
Next of kinWife, Mrs Sarah Ethel Richardson, Payneham Road, Payneham, South Australia
Enlistment date29 January 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name5th Pioneer Battalion, Reinforcement 4
AWM Embarkation Roll number14/17/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A55 Itria on 14 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll5th Pioneer Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular'He was a J.P. and was one of the leaders in Public Affairs in the District' (details given by Mrs Sarah Richardson, his widow).
FateKilled in Action 29 September 1917
Age at death36
Age at death from cemetery records36
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, 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
175
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Thomas and Elizabeth RICHARDSON; Wife: Mrs S.E. RICHARDSON, of 33 Vine Street, Prospect, South Australia. Native of Petma, South Australia.
Family/military connectionsBrother: 7811 Pte Henry Howard RICHARDSON, 16th Bn, died of wounds, 11 August 1918.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Disembarked, Plymouth, 30 October 1916; taken on strength, 5th Pioneer Battalion, France, 24 April 1917

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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