Regimental number | 7004 |
Place of birth | Daylesford, Victoria |
School | Daylesford State School, Daylesford, Victoria |
Other training | Daylesford Technical School, Victoria |
Religion | Presbyterian |
Occupation | Bank clerk |
Address | c/o Mrs Armstrong, Davey Avenue, Oakleigh, Victoria |
Marital status | Married |
Age at embarkation | 21 |
Height | 5' 8.5" |
Weight | 156 lbs |
Next of kin | Mother, Mrs M Armstrong, Davey Avenue, Oakleigh, Victoria |
Previous military service | He was in the Militia and passed for his Commission on outbreak of War. |
Enlistment date | |
Place of enlistment | Melbourne, Victoria |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 14th Battalion, 23rd Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/31/4 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A7 Medic on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 14th Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Miscellaneous details (Nominal Roll) | Date of death entered on Nominal Roll as 16 October 1917; date variously recorded on NAA file as 15 or 16 October 1917. |
Place of death or wounding | Passchendaele, Ypres, Belgium |
Age at death | 21 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 21 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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 | 72 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Son of William Thomas EDWARDS and Mary ARMSTRONG, his wife, 'Medomsley', Davey Avenue, Oakleigh, Victoria. Native of Daylesford, Victoria |
Family/military connections | Brother: 12287 Pte John EDWARDS, 2nd Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, returned to Australia, 6 May 1917. |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Statement, Red Cross File, 1790 Pte L.H. WOODBURN, 14th Bn, 22 January 1918: 'I saw him killed instantly by shell on Octr 15th at Ypres. We were just holding the line. He had just come in from patrol duty and was sleeping when he was killed - he hardly shifted his position after being knocked. He was buried just outside the trench - we could not put a cross up. I was sitting alongside him at the time he was knocked.' Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |
Sources | NAA: B2455, EDWARDS Eric Raymond
Red Cross File 0990902T |