SANDFORD, Percy Harold (1881-1918).JPG)
P H Sandford (War Service).
Percy Harold Sandford was born at Lara on 16 April 1881, the son of George James Sandford and Esther Anne nee Reed.
He attended Geelong College as a day student from 1895 until 1897. He was a member of the College 1st Cricket XI in 1896-97, a particularly good team. He did not enjoy the best of health, so spent some time in South Africa and Queensland, and it was from the latter place, while working as a station overseer at Winton, that, during World War I, he enlisted in the AIF on 1 May 1916. He embarked for France with a ‘Special Draft AIF Officers’ on
RMS Ormonde from Sydney on 2 February 1918, arriving at Southampton on 15 May, and re-embarked for France as a second lieutenant with 42 Battalion (The Black Watch) on 14 August. He died seventeen days later, on 1 September 1918 of wounds sustained at Mont St Quentin.
When the British graves were consolidated after the war, Sandford was re-interred in Hem Farm Military Cemetery, Hem-Monacu - Grave II.I.25.
His brothers,
George James Sandford (1872-1940),
Cecil Everard Sandford (1874-1946), Albert Edward Sandford (1877-1942); and
Ernest William Sandford (1883-1959), were all educated at Geelong College.
Sources: Based on an edited extract from Geelong Collegians at the Great War compiled by James Affleck. pp105-107 (citing Australian War Memorial; Pegasus December 1918; John Laffin, Guide to Australian Battlefields of the Western Front 1916-1918; Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Vivian Brahms, The Spirit of the Forty-Second: narrative of the 42nd Battalion, 11th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Division, Australian Imperial Forces, during the Great War, 1914-1918; Photo Pegasus August 1919.)