The AIF Project

Robert Ernest Herbert MARTINS

Regimental number319
Place of birthLondon, England
SchoolPublic School, England
Age on arrival in Australia33
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationBread carter
Address575 Riley Street, Surry Hills, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation36
Next of kinWife, Mrs Elizabeth Martins, 47 Upton Lane, Forest Gate, London, E, England
Enlistment date15 May 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 9, Reinforcement 3
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/14/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A73 Commonwealth on 19 September 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll4th Machine Gun Battalion
FateKilled in Action 1 July 1917
Miscellaneous details (Nominal Roll)*second given name is Herbert on photocopy
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death38
Age at death from cemetery records38
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: Robert and Elizabeth MARTINS; husband of Mrs E MARTINS, 47 Upton Lane, Forest Gate, London, England. Native of London, England
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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