The AIF Project

William Paterson GRAINGER

Regimental number2587
Place of birthMelbourne Victoria
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationMiner
AddressFootscray Road, Kensington, Melbourne, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Next of kinMother, Mrs Harriet Grainger, Footscray Road, Kensington, Melbourne, Victoria
Enlistment date7 January 1915
Place of enlistmentOaklands, South Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name15th Battalion, 8th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/32/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A55 Kyarra on 16 August 1915
Rank from Nominal RollWarrant Officer (Class II)
Unit from Nominal Roll47th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Age at death from cemetery records26
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
143
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: J. and Mary GRAINGER, 99 Charles Street, Ascot Vale, Victoria. Native of Richmond, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 1068 Gunner James Henry GRAINGER, 2nd Field Artillery Brigade, died of wounds, 10 April 1917; 1192 Corporal John GRAINGER, Artillery Details, effective abroad (still overseas).
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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