The AIF Project

Arthur Henry Bowden BAKER

Regimental number123
Place of birthCharleton, nr Kingsbridge, Devonshire, England
Age on arrival in Australia28
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
AddressUlverstone, Tasmania
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation35
Next of kinWife, Mrs Ethel Penelope Baker, North Motton, Ulverstone, Tasmania
Previous military serviceEnlisted in the Devonshire Regt, 1 April 1901; transferred to Army Reserve, 24 January 1909 after serving 7 years 21 days abroad at Rangoon, Burma (7 years 298 days in total). Served 4 years 67 days in Army Reserve: total of 12 years. Discharged 31 March 1913.
Enlistment date13 March 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll13 March 1916
Place of enlistmentHobart, Tasmania
Rank on enlistmentCorporal
Unit name40th Battalion, A Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/57/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Hobart, Tasmania, on board HMAT A35 Berrima on 1 July 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll40th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 13 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records36
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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
132
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John Henry and Cathleen BAKER; Wife: Ethel P. BAKER, North Motton, Ulverstone, Tasmania
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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