The AIF Project

William MOYES

Regimental number174
Place of birthBrunswick, Victoria
SchoolYarraville State School, Victoria
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationBaker
AddressYarraville, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation35
Next of kinFather, Robert Moyes, 37 Buninyong Street, Yarraville, Victoria
Enlistment date28 February 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name39th Battalion, A Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/56/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A11 Ascanius on 27 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll10th Light Trench Mortar Battery
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Military Medal


'Work at Armentieres on 12-13 April 1917.'
Recommendation date: 16 April 1917

FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death36
Age at death from cemetery records36
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
20
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Robert and Annie MOYES. Native of Victoria
Medals

Military Medal

'At ARMENTIERES on the night 12th/13th April, 1917, on the occasion of a heavy bombardment of our lines and an attempted enemy raid on our trenches, this man was in charge of a Stokes gun. During the heavy bombardment his emplacement received three direct hits, and the barrel of his gun became choked with mud from the explosion. With great coolness he cleaned out the gun, and continued firing on the advancing enemy; he fired in all eight shells. This man has shown coolness, courage, and ability on several previous occasions.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 174
Date: 11 October 1917

Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: Military Medal, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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