William MAXWELL

Place of birthCaulfield, Melbourne, Victoria
SchoolSt Kilda Scotch College, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationAccountant
AddressGlyndon Avenue, Brighton, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation45
Next of kinMother, Mrs Eliza Jane Maxwell, 'Toora', Glyndon Avenue, Brighton, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed as Lieutenant in the 50th Battalion. Served in the Cadets. Served in the 3rd Militia Forces
Enlistment date16 March 1916
Rank on enlistment2nd Lieutenant
Unit name38th Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/55/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A54 Runic on 20 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll38th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death34
Age at death from cemetery records34
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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
130
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Charles and Eliza MAXWELL (nee MOONEY). Native of Caulfield, Victoria
Family/military connectionsCPT, LL Beauchamp MC 39Bn, CO
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal