The AIF Project

Murdoch Morrison PARISH

Regimental number3744
Place of birthWimmera, Victoria
ReligionMethodist
OccupationLabourer
AddressCaloote via Mannum, River Murray, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation32
Next of kinSister, Mrs E M Brighton, Caloote via Mannum, River Murray, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date5 August 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name16th Battalion, 12th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/33/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board RMS Malwa on 2 December 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll48th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 9 June 1917
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
146
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Taken on strength, 48th Bn, 9 March 1916. Admitted to 2nd Australian Stationary Hospital, Tel el Kebir, 26 March 1916 (syphilis); discharged to quarantine, 16 April 1916.

Embarked from Alexandria, 6 June 1916; disembarked Plymouth, 16 June 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 8 September 1916; joined unit, 29 September 1916.

Admitted to 1st Canadian General Hospital, Etaples, 2 December 1916 (bronchitis); transferred to England, 26 December 1916, and admitted to Horton County of London Hospital, Epsom, 28 December 1916 (pneumonia). Granted furlough, 26 February 1917, to report to No. 1 Command Depot, 14 March 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 29 April 1917; taken on strength, 48th Bn, 3 May 1917.

Killed in action, France, 9 June 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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