PRIVATE WALLACE ROSS
AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
17TH NOVEMBER 1916 AGE 22
BURIED: ST SEVER COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION, ROUEN, FRANCE
Wallace Ross was admitted to hospital in Rouen on 11 November, dangerously ill with a gun shot wound to his head. He died six days later - 'Life's highest mission fulfilled': to die for your country.
It was his sister, Catherine MacDonald, who filled in the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia and confirmed Wallace's headstone inscription, their parents would appear to have been dead.
Wallace Ross, a rubber worker from Northcote, Australia, enlisted in July 1915 and embarked from Australia on 23 November as part of the reinforcements for the 5th Battalion Australian Infantry. Withdrawn from Gallipoli in mid-December, the battalion served briefly in Egypt before being transferred to the Western Front where it was heavily involved in the Somme campaign at Pozieres. Ross was wounded on 26 July with a slight gun shot wound to the head. He was back in action after two months. And then two months later he was dead.
Three years after the death of her brother, Catherine MacDonald gave birth to a son whom she named Douglas Wallace Ross MacDonald.