William George NEWTON

Regimental number950
Place of birthRedesdale Junction, Victoria
SchoolState School
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
AddressRedesdale Junction, via Kyneton, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation26
Next of kinFather, William Newton, Redesdale Junction, via Kyneton, Victoria
Enlistment date14 February 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name38th Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/55/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A54 Runic on 20 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll38th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularHis father was a native of Kyneton and his mother a native of Blackwood, Victoria. His oldest brother served in the South African War.
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Age at death27.11
Age at death from cemetery records27
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
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Mary NEWTON, Redesdale Junction Railway Station, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrother: 951 Corporal Charles Ernest NEWTON MM, 38th Bn, returned to Australia, 22 September 1919; Brother-in-law: 645A Sergeant James Henry Steele KING MM, 38th Bn, returned to Australia, 12 May 1918; Cousin: 3467 Sergeant Herbert Henry BURNELL, 23rd Bn, returned to Australia, 29 May 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal