The AIF Project

Roy St Clair MASON

Regimental number4848
Place of birthEllendale, Tasmania
SchoolGlenora State School, Tasmania
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Height5' 9.5"
Weight126 lbs
Next of kinFather, J Mason, 262 Elizabeth Street, Hobart, Tasmania
Previous military serviceServed for 2 years in the Senior Cadets; previously rejected for AIF enlistment on account of chest measurement being too small.
Enlistment date27 October 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll25 October 1915
Place of enlistmentRoss, Tasmania
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name12th Battalion, 15th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/29/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A70 Ballarat on 18 February 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll12th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 19 September 1917
Miscellaneous details (Nominal Roll)*date of fate 19th to 20th
Place of death or woundingMenin Road, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death21.10
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
66
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William John and Henrietta C.C. MASON, 89 Elizabeth Street, Hobart, Tasmania. Native of Ellendale, Tasmania
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, MASON Roy St Clair

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