Walter HEWIT

Regimental number3645
Place of birthEdinburgh, Scotland
SchoolSt Leonard's Public School, Edinburgh, Scotland
Age on arrival in Australia31
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationTinsmith
AddressBexley, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation33
Next of kinWife, Mrs J Hewit, Dunnegan, Queen Victoria Street, Bexley, New South Wales
Previous military serviceServed for a number of years in the GERVB [Greater Edinburgh Rifles Volunteer Brigade?].
Enlistment date22 August 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll22 August 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name18th Battalion, 8th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/35/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A60 Aeneas on 20 December 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll53rd Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular'He was a keen sportsman and very interested in golf.' (details from wife).
FateKilled in Action 23 September 1917
Age at death from cemetery records36
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), 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
157
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Christina HEWIT; husband of Janet HEWIT, Planthurst Road, Kogarah, New South Wales. Native of Edinburgh, Scotland
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
Miscellaneous detailsName entered incorrectly on Embarkation Roll as HEWITT.