Philip MacDonnell SANDERSON (1884-1957)

Captain Philip MacDonnell Sanderson (1884-1957) was a colleague of Cyril Sladden in the 9th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment.

Philip Sanderson was born on 14th March 1884 at Elstree, Hertfordshire, the eleventh of 13 children of the Reverend Lancelot Sanderson and his wife, Katherine Susan Oldfield (née Warner).  As well as being a Clerk in Holy Orders, Reverend Sanderson was also Headmaster and owner of Elstree School, which was where the family lived.  Philip was educated at Malvern College. 

During the First World War, Philip Sanderson joined the Worcestershire Regiment and was gazetted Lieutenant.  He was on the same boat out to Gallipoli in July 1915 that Cyril Sladden was on and is mentioned in several of Cyril’s letters written between October 1915 and February 1916.  At this stage, Lieutenant Sanderson was promoted to Captain.  In November 1915, whilst in reserve, Cyril dined out with D Company at Sanderson’s invitation, Cyril describing it as “a cheery evening, Sanderson being about the most irrepressible and cheerful man I ever encountered.  Not bad work going out to dinner only some few hundred yards from the Turkish lines, is it?”

It seems that their paths parted some time in 1916 as Captain Sanderson was no longer mentioned.  His WW1 medal card indicates that he was eligible for the Silver War Badge on 21st February 1919, which means that he must have been invalided out of the army.  Early in 1917 he married Eileen Mildred Rendall in London, so one assumes he had been injured in 1916 and returned to England.

He became a merchant and travelled to India where they lived for a time.  By 1939 he was back in England living at Brockley Hill, Hertfordshire; he was described as a wine merchant managing director.

Philip MacDonnell Sanderson of Tassels, Tenterden, Kent, died on 7th September 1957 at Kench Hill, Tenterden.  His widow died 22 years later.