Christopher John LYNE

Regimental number6050
Place of birthCharters Towers, Queensland
SchoolChristian Brothers (Catholic) College, Charters Towers, Queensland
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationClerk
Address833 Brunswick Street, Brisbane, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinMother, Mrs E A Lyne, 833 Brunswick Street, Brisbane, Queensland
Previous military serviceHe served in the Cadets at Charters Towers as an NCO and was a Corporal in Brisbane.
Enlistment date17 January 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll21 December 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name3rd Battalion, 19th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/20/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A18 Wiltshire on 22 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll3rd Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularHe was a Corporal in Sydney and threw in his stripes to get away to the war as he thought they were keeping him too long there and the Officers Message from the Battle Field to me was that he was one of the bravest and best soldier's that ever lived. (Mother)
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death21.9
Age at death from cemetery records23
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
37
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Christopher and Elizabeth LYNE, 833 Brunswick Street, New Farm, Queensland. Native of Charters Towers, Queensland
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal