The AIF Project

Hugh McCUSKER

Regimental number5423
Place of birthCo Tyrone, Ireland
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationLabourer
AddressSmithtown, Macleay River, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation29
Height5' 6"
Weight150 lbs
Next of kinSister, Miss K McCusker, 2220 Cross Street, Philadelphia, United States
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date4 January 1916
Place of enlistmentLiverpool, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name13th Battalion, 17th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/30/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A71 Nestor on 9 April 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll45th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Military Medal


Awarded 4 November 1916
Recommendation date: 27 October 1916

FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingBelgium
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
140
Medals

Military Medal

'On the night of 15th/16th October, 1816, during a raid on the German trenches near DIEPENDAAL. He was a stretcher bearer attached to the party. After carrying in one wounded man (on his back) from 'No Man's Land' to our trenches, he returned with a stretcher for a second casualty.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No 103
Date: 29 June 1917

Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Taken on strength, 45th Bn, 19 July 1916.

Appointed Lance-Corporal, France, 15 February 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 7 June 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, McCUSKER Hugh

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