The AIF Project

Henry Arthur BELLCHAMBERS

Regimental number3030
Place of birthBeech Forest, Victoria
SchoolBeech Forest State School, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
AddressFerguson, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinFather, Harry Bellchambers, Ferguson, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date25 October 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name39th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/56/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A70 Ballarat on 19 February 1917
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll39th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Date of death12 October 1917
Age at death20.8
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
Family/military connectionsBrother: 6781 Pte Charles Ernest BELLCHAMBERS, 24th Bn, returned to Australia, 12 May 1918.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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