The AIF Project

Robert PARK

Date of birth8 December 1886
Place of birthSouthbridge, New Zealand
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationSoldier
AddressMosman, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation29
Height6' 1.5"
Weight175 lbs
Next of kinWife, Mrs G E Park, 'Thelma', May Street, Eastwood, New South Wales
Previous military serviceCommissioned in Royal Australian Engineers, 1 November 1913; still serving at time of AIF enlistment.
Enlistment date1 May 1916
Rank on enlistmentCaptain
Unit name
AWM Embarkation Roll number16/13/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A69 Warilda on 22 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollCaptain
Unit from Nominal Roll13th Field Company Engineers
FateKilled in Action 26 September 1917
Age at death from cemetery records30
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
24
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Robert George and Mary Campbell Ferguson PARK; Wife: Mrs G.E. PARK, 'Coo-ee', Mowbray Road, Chatswood, New South Wales
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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