Ralph Leslie BROADBENT [15]

  General Notes:

1895 SA Birth BROADBENT Ralph Leslie Henry Feild BROADBENT Mary Hill HUGHES Clare 567/306

WW1 Roll of Honour, Australian War Memorial
Ralph Leslie BROADBENT
Regimental number 2037
School Victor Harbor Public School, South Australia
Religion Methodist
Occupation Farmer
Address Hummock's Hill, South Australia
Marital status Single
Age at embarkation 21
Next of kin Mother, Mrs Mary Hill Broadbent, same address
Previous military service Nil
Enlistment date 16 June 1916
Rank on enlistment Private
Unit name 43rd Battalion, 3rd Reinforcement/showUnit?unitCode=INF43REIN3
AWM Embarkation Roll number 23/60/2
Embarkation details Unit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A68 Anchises on 28 August 1916
Rank from Nominal Roll Private
Unit from Nominal Roll 43rd Battalion
Fate Killed in Action 31 July 1917
Place of death or wounding Warneton, Messines, Belgium
Age at death 22
Place of burial No known grave
Commemoration details The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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, 136

Miscellaneous information from cemetery records
Parents: Henry and Mary BROADBENT, Whyalla, South Australia
Other details War service:
Western Front Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Blackwood Soldiers Project
Ralph Leslie Broadbent was a son of Henry Field Broadbent and Mary Hill Broadbent (nee Hughes), and was born at Wandearah, SA (south of Port Pirie) in 1895. He attended Victor Harbor Public School, was a keen sportsman and worked as a farmer before the war.

He enlisted on 16 June 1916 at the age of 20, and after a short stint in a training unit in England, joined 'Cork' Company of the 43rd Battalion in France in January 1917. After several months of static trench warfare, Ralph fought in his first major action during the Battle of Messines in June 1917.

On 31 July 1917, the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres, the 43rd Battalion was ordered to capture six German posts near Warneton, Belgium. 'Cork' Company was tasked to capture three of the posts, and took many casualties during the capture of one located in a ruined windmill. During the attack or the subsequent German and Australian counter-attacks, Ralph was killed in action. 44 members of the battalion were killed that day. His body could not be located after the battle, and his name is inscribed on panel 27 of the Menin Gate Memorial near Ypres, Belgium, along with many other Australians with no known grave.

After the war the town of Whyalla (previously called Hummock's Hill) named a street (Broadbent Terrace) in his honour. His name is also inscribed on the State National Memorial, the Whyalla memorial and the Cherry Gardens Methodist Church Roll of Honour. In describing her son for the Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, Mary Broadbent quoted from a letter sent to her by Ralph's platoon commander in which he described him as 'a splendid companion to have nearby when things were hot, who always set a splendid example of cheerfulness, even under most adverse conditions.'