The grave of the only foreign soldier buried at Vicksburg National Cemetery has been marked with a headstone of his native Australia.

Sgt. Edgar Horace Hawter of the Royal Australian Air Force was flying with two U.S. Air Force sergeants with Vicksburg ties when all three were killed during World War II.

All three have been buried in Vicksburg National Cemetery since 1949, in a grave marked with a stone that bears all three names.

The week before Memorial Day, though, an individual stone honoring Hawter and bearing the seal of the Royal Australian Air Force was placed beside the existing stone by cemetery staff.

The cemetery was established in 1866 in what is now the northwestern part of Vicksburg National Military Park. It contains about 18,300 graves, about 17,000 of them of Civil War-era soldiers and sailors and about 13,000 of those unidentified.

At least two of the Civil War dead whose grave markers identify them are of troops who fought on the Confederate side and are believed to have been captured and died in Union war hospitals, one each from Arkansas and Texas.

The remaining 1,300 graves – except for Hawter’s – are of U.S. veterans of later wars.

The two Americans whose remains were buried with Hawter’s were Vernon McBroom and Robert Middleton. McBroom was the son of Salon J. and Sally McBroom of Vicksburg and Middleton was the brother of Isaac B. Middleton, also of Vicksburg.

They were killed in Burma, which was then itself a part of the British Commonwealth, on July 26, 1942, about nine months after the United States entered the war.

The month before their deaths in the Pacific Theater, the United States had achieved in the Battle of Midway what U.S. Navy information calls a turning point, &#8220bringing Japan’s Pacific offensive to an abrupt halt.”

And the month after their deaths U.S. Marines landed on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal, beginning another pivotal step in a long and costly Japanese retreat that ended in its surrender in August 1945.

The three were buried in a common grave in a military cemetery on the Pacific island of New Guinea, park historian Terry Winschel said.

Family of the two Americans asked that their remains be moved to the United States and, because two of the three were Americans, that request was granted. They were reburied here in 1949, Winschel said.

Winschel said he’d been trying on his own for years to get Hawter’s grave its own marker. On a business trip to Washington, D.C., in 2000 he visited top Australian diplomats and requested a grave marker from that country’s government.

That request was not granted but the Australians did give Winschel a flag. He said he’s placed it on Hawter’s grave on two days each year: ANZAC Day, the April 25 anniversary of the first major action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces in World War I, and Veteran’s Day, the Nov. 11 anniversary of the 1918 armistice ending World War I.

Shortly after he began honoring Hawter’s grave in that way, Winschel contacted members of Hawter’s family who live in western Australia through an Australian library bulletin board by way of the Internet.

&#8220They said that, yes, the family had been notified (of Hawter’s death during the war) in the 1940s,” Winschel said. &#8220They were pleased to hear that the grave was well-maintained and that we were flying an Australian flag there on those two days.”

The placing of the marker for Hawter resulted from a regular visit by an inspection officer of the organization established to oversee the maintenance of the graves of the 1.7 million men and women of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa forces who died in the two world wars.

That inspection officer, Jerry Mayer of the North American office of the Commonwealth Graves Commission in Ottawa, was on a trip through Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama to inspect markers on the graves of 152 Commonwealth war dead and 20 French war dead through a cooperative agreement with that country’s government.

&#8220Cyclically, someone from our office will visit (each gravesite) to check if work is required – if it needs to be cleaned, straightened, lowered or replaced,” Mayer said.

A CWGC representative made the first such visit to Vicksburg in 1982 or 1983, said its Canadian secretary general, Brad Hall.

Hall said he attempted to visit in 1995 but that his visit happened to fall on the day non-essential U.S. government functions were suspended that year due to a breakdown in negotiations over the federal budget. He then visited again in 2003.

&#8220I thought the headstone needed to be cleaned,” Mayer said of what he found on his March 20 visit here. &#8220And we ended up in a discussion to erect a headstone for that individual.”

Mayer sought and received authorization to have the stone engraved and sent to Vicksburg and cemetery staff here installed it May 25, he said.

The CWGC cares for grave or memorial sites in every U.S. state but Arkansas, Delaware and Nevada and in 149 other countries.

Winschel said Hawter’s family members with whom he has communicated are in the fruit-growing industry. They have visited the United States but have confined their visits to fruit-growing areas of the West Coast, Winschel said.

&#8220They hope one day they can make it a little farther east” and visit their relative’s grave, Winschel said.

Vicksburg National is the largest national cemetery in the United States in terms of Civil War burials.

In 1961, every plot in the cemetery became either full or reserved and the cemetery was closed. Since then, the cemetery averages about two to three burials a year and fewer than 10 outstanding reservations remain, Winschel added.