The AIF Project

Gladstone Montague HUNT

ReligionChurch of England
OccupationMedical practitioner
AddressSydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Next of kinBrother, A F Hunt, Office of General Staff, Victoria Barracks, Sydney, New South Wales
Enlistment date20 May 1915
Rank on enlistmentCaptain
Unit nameNo 1 Australian General Hospital
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board A62 Wandilla on 25 June 1915
Rank from Nominal RollMajor
Unit from Nominal RollAustralian Army Medical Corps
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records27
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
183
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: James and Mary HUNT. Native of New South Wales
Medals

Military Cross

'For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He showed an absolute disregard of danger and set a splendid example to his stretcher bearers, working with them over ground continually swept by heavy fire. He worked for six consecutive weeks in a forward area in charge of an advanced dressing station.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 133
Date: 21 August 1917

Other detailsMedals: Military Cross, 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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