The AIF Project

Allan Frank BEARD

Regimental number1871
Place of birthCroydon, South Australia
SchoolBrompton Public School, South Australia
ReligionMethodist
OccupationBootmaker
AddressTorrens Road, Croydon, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinMother, Mrs Agnes Hollingsworth Beard, Torrens Road, Croydon, South Australia
Previous military service77th Infantry; Served in the 76th Battalion, Citizen Military Forces, South Australia.
Enlistment date14 January 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name50th Battalion, 3rd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/67/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A48 Seang Bee on 13 July 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll50th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 16 October 1917
Place of death or woundingFrance
Age at death23
Age at death from cemetery records22
Place of burialNo known grave
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
150
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Frank William and Agnes Hollingworth BEARD, 'Sandhurst', Torrens Road, Croydon, South Australia
Family/military connectionsBrother: 958 Pte Arthur William BEARD DCM, 9th Light Horse Regiment, returned to Australia, 4 March 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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