Thomas MAXWELL

Regimental number3176
Place of birthGlasgow, Scotland
SchoolGlasgow Presbyterian School, Scotland
Age on arrival in Australia24
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationEngineer
AddressLunenberg, Western Australia
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation31
Next of kinWife, Mrs Lily Maxwell, Worsley PO, Worsley, Western Australia
Enlistment date27 November 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll7 October 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name46th Battalion, 8th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/63/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A34 Persic on 29 December 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll46th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 28 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Ypres Belgium
Age at death30
Age at death from cemetery records30
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
142
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: william adn Annie MAXWELL; husband of Lily MAXWELL, 6 Hubert Street, Victoria Park, Western Australia. Native of Glasgow, Scotland
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal