Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

When Samuel Claude Callander was born in 1894 at Numurkah in Victoria his father Samuel McLay Callander was 33 and his mother Sarah Callander (nee Boyd) was 34. He had two brothers, (Percy McLay Callander and Leslie James callander, and two sisters Jean McLay Callander and my maternal grandmother Margaret Elizabeth Callander who was married to Albert Harris Lance Corporal 705 and served with distinction with the 15th Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery. Following the outbreak of WWI Samuel enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force on the 27th July 1915 when he was aged 20 years and 10 months and was living at 13 Moore Street, North Brighton with his parents. Private callander 3059 firstly served with the 7th Reinforcements/24th Battalion and was eventually transferred to the 8th Australian Infantry Battalion on the 24th February 1916. Tragically he was wounded in action in France at Fleurbaix on the 5th June 1916, receiving a gunshot wound in the back resulting with spinal injuries and other abdominal complications, leaving him permanently and totally incompacitated with paraplegia and without any dignity. An X-ray also revealed he had another healed wound, 6 inches left of his spine just below the angle of his left scapular. Private Samuel Claude Callander eventually returned to Australia on the hospital ship named 'Karoola' on 27 August 1917 and was honorably discharged unfit for duty or public service on the 25th of February 1918. He was admitted to the ANZAV Hostel in North Road, North Brighton where he stayed for 4 years until his death (a short distance from the family home at 13 Moore Street, North Brighton) on the 23rd of May 1923 when he was aged 29 years. When he enlisted in the A.I.F. he was a Blacksmith's Striker by occupation. Lance Corporal Callander was awarded the 1914/15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He never married.