The AIF Project

James Alexander McCULLOUGH

Regimental number162
Place of birthBallymena, Co Antrim, Ireland
Age on arrival in Australia10
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationLabourer
AddressPunch's Creek, Millmerran, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Height6' 0"
Weight144 lbs
Next of kinFather, Robert McCullough, Rocky Creek, Millmerran, Queensland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date11 November 1915
Place of enlistmentToowoomba, Queensland
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name42nd Battalion, Machine Gun Section
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/59/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A30 Borda on 5 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll42nd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingEast of Zonnebeke, South West of Passchendaele
Age at death20
Age at death from cemetery records20
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
135
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: R. and Isabell McCULLOUGH, Punch's Creek, Millmerran, Queensland
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 3593 Pte Robert McCULLOUGH, 31st Bn, returned to Australia, 31 January 1918; 238 Pte John McCULLOUG MM, 41st Bn, returned to Australia, 9 February 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 5 June 1916; disembarked Southampton, England, 23 July 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 26 November 1916.

Appointed Lance Corporal, in the field, 22 May 1917.

Accidentally wounded (reported as battle casualty), and Admitted to 77th Field Ambulance, 21 June 1917 (gun shot wound, left leg), and transferred same day to No 1 Australian Casualty Clearing Station; transferred to Ambulance Train, 22 June 1917; discharged to duty, 16 July 1917.

Appointed Temporary Corporal, 17 July 1917; Corporal, 4 August 1917; Temporary Sergeant, 26 August 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 4 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Father wrote to Base Records, 12 March 1918: 'On the 27th of October last, I received an ungent telegram [signed Lieut Colonel Luscombe], informing me of my son's death. Since receiving this telegram I have had no further news of my son. This surely is not businesslike. If Lieut. Col. Luscombe knew of his death, why have I not been given details from the records department as to where he was killed, & any information that is obtainable. I have two other sons fighting at the Front, & it does not inspire confidence in one to be trated thus.'
SourcesNAA: B2455, McCULLOUGH James Alexander

Print format    


© The AIF Project 2024, UNSW Canberra. Not to be reproduced without permission.