The AIF Project

Benno Carl LEHMANN

Place of birthMaitland, South Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationMarine engineer
AddressAthlone, Allen Street, East Fremantle, Western Australia
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation36
Next of kinWife, Mrs E J Lehmann, Athlone, Allen Street, East Fremantle, Western Australia
Enlistment date16 September 1915
Rank on enlistmentLieutenant
Unit name11th Battalion, 14th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/28/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A28 Miltiades on 12 February 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll3rd Machine Gun Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

DSO


6 May 1917. Conpicuous gallantry and devotion to duty while in charge of a gun, and later in leading successful bombing attack.
Recommendation date: 10 May 1917

FateKilled in Action 21 September 1917
Place of death or woundingGlencorse Wood, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death37
Age at death from cemetery records37
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
178
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Emil and Augusta LEHMANN; husband of Mrs. E. LEHMANN, Solomon Street, Palmyra, East Fremantle, Western Australia
Medals

Military Cross

'For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. During an enemy counter attack he brought his gun into account at great personal risk. On seeing his gun in danger of being captured he led a bombing attack, and though twice wounded, remained until the enemy was repulsed.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 219
Date: 20 December 1917

Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: Military Cross, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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