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Private Walter Maxwell
Year of Birth: 1895
Date of Death: 11/11/1917
Age at Death: 22
Nationality: Australian
Regiment: 4th Battalion of the Australian Infantry Corps
Family: Mother and Father
Image: Anzac Beach at 8am on 25 April 1915. Men from the Australian 4th Battalion (1st Brigade) and Jacob's 26th Indian Mountain Battery are seen landing. The men in the foreground belong to the 1st Brigade staff. At the water's edge is the body of Sapper R. Reynolds, one of the first men to be killed at Gallipoli. Photographer: L-Cpl. Arthur Robert Henry Joyner (1st Division Signal Company, killed 5 December 1916 at Bazentin, Somme)
Service number: 6757 Screen Wall. B10. 288.
Walter Maxwell was the son of Mrs Eliza Maxwell, born in New South Wales, Australia. Walter was unmarried and living in Waverly when he joined the Australian Infantry Force during the First World War.
Walter was assigned to the 4th Battalion of the AIF, which saw action at Gallipoli before being redeployed in France in 1917. Ostensibly deployed to cover the German retreat along the Hindenburg Line, the battalion was soon redeployed to support the forces at Passchendaele, where the 5th Battalion of the AIF had already been heavily involved in the defence against a substantial German counter-attack on 25th September.
It was presumably towards the final stages of the battle that Walter, aged 22 at the time, was wounded. He was brought back to Britain, where he was treated in the military hospital established at the University of Birmingham.
Walter died from his wounds on 11th November 1917, the day after the Battle of Passchendaele had ended and exactly a year prior to the armistice in 1918. Walter was one amongst thousands of Commonwealth soldiers who died supporting the British war effort and never returned home, with his remains interred at Lodge Hill Cemetery in Birmingham.
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