The AIF Project

William Barry Ritchie MILLAR

Regimental number2653
Place of birthBallygowan, Co. Down, Ireland
SchoolOlivet National School, Ballygown, Co. Down, Ireland
Age on arrival in Australia22
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationCommercial traveller
Address162 Hereford Street, Forest Lodge, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Next of kinFather, J Miller, Rockmount, Ballygowan County Down, Ireland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date20 June 1915
Place of enlistmentLiverpool, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name13th Battalion, 8th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/30/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A54 Runic on 9 August 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll45th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death25
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
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John and Mary MILLAR, Ballygowen, Co. Down, Ireland
SourcesNAA: B2455, MILLAR William Barry Ritchie

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