Regimental number | 2700 |
Date of birth | |
Place of birth | Waterloo, New South Wales |
School | Marrickville Public School, New South Wales |
Religion | Baptist |
Occupation | Labourer |
Address | 144 Sydenham Road, Marrickville, New South Wales |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 22 |
Next of kin | Mother, Mrs Mary Murphy, 144 Sydenham Road, Marrickville, New South Wales |
Enlistment date | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 30th Battalion, 5th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/47/2 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A71 Nestor on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 5th Machine Gun Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Commemoration details | The 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 | 179 |
Family/military connections | Brother: 495 Corporal William MURPHY, 9th Trench Mortar Battery, returned to Australia, 11 May 1919. |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Killed instantly by a shell near Bapaume, France, 25 September 1917. Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |