Douglas Allen GARDINER

Regimental number2571
Place of birthGreenbushes Western Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
AddressFerguson, via Dardanup, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Next of kinFather, William Gardiner, Ferguson, via Dardanup, Western Australia
Enlistment date28 August 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll29 August 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name43rd Battalion, 5th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/60/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A8 Argyllshire on 9 November 1916
Regimental number from Nominal Roll2571B
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll12th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 8 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records26
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), Belgium

The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave.

The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936.

Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.

Panel number, Roll of Honour,
  Australian War Memorial
65
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Harriet GARDINER, Ferguson, Western Australia
Family/military connectionsBrother: 1474 Pte Alfred Walter GARDINER, 16th Bn, returned to Australia, 7 November 1915.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal