Burton Arthur KING

Regimental number1454
Place of birthSassafras, Tasmania
SchoolLatrobe State School, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
AddressForth, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Next of kinFather, Charles King, Forth, Tasmania
Enlistment date19 December 1914
Place of enlistmentCairns, Queensland
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name9th Battalion, 2nd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/26/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A48 Seang Bee on 13 February 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll9th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Unspecified


Marked Leadership and gallantry while in charge of gun team. (Near Le Barque 24-26 February 1917).
Recommendation date: 10 March 1917

FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, France
Age at death from cemetery records27
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
56
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Charles and Amy KING, Forth, Tasmania. Native of Sassafras, Tasmania
Family/military connectionsCousin: [3406] Lt John Roy FIDLER MC, returned to Australia, 3 May 1919.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli , Western Front

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