| Regimental number | 1680 |
| Place of birth | Williamstown, Victoria |
| School | Williamstown and Rushworth State Schools, Victoria |
| Religion | Church of England |
| Occupation | Tinsmith |
| Address | 85 Harold Street, Middle Park, Victoria |
| Marital status | Single |
| Age at embarkation | 19 |
| Next of kin | Father, Herbert Major, 85 Harold Street, Middle Park, Victoria |
| Previous military service | 51st Infantry |
| Enlistment date | |
| Rank on enlistment | Private |
| Unit name | 59th Battalion, 2nd Reinforcement |
| AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/76/3 |
| Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A17 Port Lincoln on |
| Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
| Unit from Nominal Roll | 58th Battalion |
| Fate | Killed in Action |
| Age at death from cemetery records | 19 |
| Place of burial | No known grave |
| Commemoration details | The 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 | 166 |
| Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: Herbert and Blanche MAJOR, The Avenue, Albert Park, Victoria. Native of Victoria |
| Other details |
War service: Western Front Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal Australian Graves Services, London, wrote to Base Records, 1 February 1922: 'The above named soldiers [including R.H. MAJOR] were originally reported to have been buried at Cable Head I. In the course of operations Exhumation Parties working over that area were unable to identify the graves of the five soldiers mentioned and as the bodies found in the neighborhood of Cable Head] were re-interred in eleven different cemeteries it was quite out of the question to erect Special Crosses for those five other ranks.' |
Postal Address:
Po Box 7916
Canberra BC 2610, Australia
Street Address:
Northcott Drive,
Campbell, ACT 2600
