Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Arthur was born in 1894 in Tallangatta, Victoria. He was one of four sons to Frederick Moore and Maria Ann (née Hore) Chanter. On the 1st of May 1900, Maria passed away leaving Frederick to care for four boys under the age of 13. In 1903 the family were still living at Granya with Frederick still working as a miner. By 1911 Frederick had moved the family to Melbourne where they were living in South Melbourne. Frederick was working as a labourer in the area. All four of Frederick’s sons would enlist during the war.

Arthur enlisted on the 21st of July 1915 at Melbourne. He was initially placed with the 6th Reinforcements for the 22nd Battalion. Given the rank of Private, he was allocated the Regimental Number 2620. There is no information about Arthurs earliest service. The first recorded event is him embarking at Melbourne on HMAT A38 Ulysses on the 27th of October 1915. In late January of 1916 he was admitted to the 3rd Auxiliary Hospital at Heliopolis. The reason is listed as “weakness”. One month later he was allotted to the 7th Battalion and joined them at Serapeum, 120 kilometres north-east of Cairo, on the 24th of February.

After completing further training in the desert sands around Serapeum, the battalion embarked on HMAT Megantic at Alexandria on the 26th of March and arrived in southern France at the Port of Marseilles five days later. The ship encountered heavy swells during the passage which resulted in two-thirds of the officers and men suffering from seasickness.The strength of the battalion at this time was 28 officers and 969 other ranks.

The battalion entrained at Marseilles and it took three days to reach their final destination near Bailleul in France. Unfortunately during the journey the train ran over and killed a Canadian soldier who tried to cross on the train buffers in the centre of the train while it was trying to shunt into a siding.

The lead up to the 7th Battalion’s first major encounter has already been mentioned in Jim McMahon's story. It’s not known at what stage of the battle on the 25th of July that Arthur was killed. The day was chaotic and by the time the battalion had occupied what was left of the village of Pozieres the enemy shelling had reached an average of 15 to 20 shells per minute. 

Arthur was buried in the Gordon Dump Cemetery,  at Ovillers-la Boisselle in Picardie, France. Rev. R Harris, who was attached to the 1st Pioneer Battalion conducted the service. Arthur is also remembered on the Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, and the Towong Shire Boer War and WW1 Memorial in the Memorial Hall in Tallangatta. For his service during the First World War, Arthur was awarded the 1914-1915 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

Arthur Chanter was born in June 1894 in Tallangatta, Victoria. He was the tenth child, and fifth son, of Maria Hore and Frederick Chanter. 

He enlisted on October 15th, 1915, one month before his brothers Frederick, John, and James. Arthur was attached to the 7th Battalion, part of the 1st ANZAC corps; Frederick was enlisted in the 22nd Battalion, John in the 1st Machine Gun Squadron and James in the 21st Battalion.

On February 24th, 1916, Arthur was at Serapeum in Egypt where he joined his unit who were engaged in outpost duty. He is probably one of the four hundred and seventy-nine reinforcements recorded in the unit diary, increasing the battalion strength to nine hundred and eighty-nine men.

In March the AIF units in Egyptian camps boarded transport ships for France and the trenches of the Western Front. The battalion, with a strength of thirty officers and nine hundred and eighty troops entered the trenches of Fromelles on May 3rd having established a canteen in the days since their May 1st arrival. On May 4th they experienced enemy fire, and the accidental explosion of a German fuse cap resulted in eight causalities. Enemy aircraft were also active and so for the new reinforcements, as Arthur was, this was certainly a baptism of fire.

The battalion’s first major battle was at Pozieres in France. The Battalion was on the frontline between July 23rd and 27th and again in August from the 15th to the 21st. After Pozieres the troops of the 7th Battalion moved into the trenches in the Ypres Salient in Belgium. A salient is a battlefield that projects into an opponent's territory and is surrounded on three sides, making the occupying troops vulnerable. Throughout World War I along the Western Front, troops engaged in mine warfare, using tunnelling and trench strategies without coordinating their attacks with one another. Soldiers used tunnels and dugouts to shelter themselves, and to safely make their way to the front lines, relay messages, and launch offensive attacks on their enemies.

On July 25th, while the 7th Battalion was in these trenches close to the Swan Chateau, Arthur Chanter was killed in action. Whether he was on a scavenging patrol or a reconnaissance patrol, or whether he was hit by a random burst of artillery fire there is no detail in his record or in the unit diary. Each day in the trenches the battalion suffered casualties and numbers were recorded but not names in every case. Arthur was twenty-two years old.

Arthur is buried in the Gordon Dump Military cemetery in the town of Ovillers-la-Boisselle, about five kilometres from Pozieres in the Somme region of France. Arthur’s name is located at panel 49 in the Commemorative Area at the Australian War Memorial and on the Granya War memorial.