The AIF Project

Philip John CARDWELL

Regimental number1857
Place of birthMarton near Blackpool, Lancashire, England
SchoolBlackpool High School
Age on arrival in Australia21
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
AddressApsley, South Kyogle, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Next of kinMother, Mrs Margaret Alice Cardwell, Martin Bank, Great Martin, Blackpool, Lancashire, England
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date14 September 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name2nd Light Horse Regiment, 13th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number10/7/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A36 Boonah on 22 January 1916
Rank from Nominal RollDriver
Unit from Nominal Roll11th Field Artillery Brigade
FateKilled in Action 22 October 1917
Place of death or woundingYpres, Belgium
Age at death26
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
16
Family/military connectionsNil
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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