The AIF Project

Norman MARTIN

Regimental number4233
Date of birth12 July 1898
Place of birthCharters Towers, Queensland
SchoolState School, Charters Towers, Queensland
Other trainingElectrical engineering
OccupationAssistant shopman
AddressTownsville, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Next of kinMother, Mrs F C Martin, Anne Street, Charters Towers, Queensland
Enlistment date13 August 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll30 August 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name9th Battalion, 13th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/26/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A55 Kyarra on 3 January 1916
Rank from Nominal Roll2nd Lieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll1st Machine Gun Battalion
Promotions

2nd Lieutenant


Unit: 21st Machine Gun Company
Promotion date: 31 January 1917

Lieutenant


Unit: 21st Machine Gun Company
Promotion date: 11 June 1917

FateKilled in Action 29 October 1917
Age at death19
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
Medals

Military Cross

'For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. His subsection was attacked in the rear by over-powering numbers, and seeing no hope of saving his guns, he caused them to be destroyed, and fought his way through. Later, he organized scattered elements of infantry and organized a successful attack, driving the enemy back.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 169
Date: 4 October 1917

Family/military connectionsBrother: Corporal J.J. Martin
Other details

War service: Western Front

Enlisted, 30 August 1915. Appointed Lance Corporal, 22 December 1916; Corporal, 31 January 1917. Commissioned, 31 January 1917. Taken on strength, 3rd Machine Gun Company, 2 August 1916; 21st Machine Gun Company, 31 January 1917.

Medals: Military Cross, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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