Finlay McDONALD

Regimental number276
Place of birthRosehill New South Wales
Other NamesMACDONALD
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationLabourer
Addressc/o H R McLaurin, Yarra Yarra Station, Germanton, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Next of kinMother, Mrs Alexima Kelly, Ficosa PO, Vancouver Bc, Canada
Enlistment date30 January 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name17th Battalion, A Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/34/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board Transport A32 Themistocles on 12 May 1915
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll17th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Age at death from cemetery records20
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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.

Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Alexina KELLY (formerly MACDONALD) 1861, 39th Avenue East, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and the late Donald MACDONALD. Native of Shieldaig, Ross-shire, Scotland
Medals

Military Medal


Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 140
Date: 27 August 1917