The AIF Project

Leonard PATTERSON

Regimental number22213
Place of birthQuorn, South Australia
Other NamesPATERSON
SchoolPort Augusta Public School, South Australia
ReligionMethodist
OccupationEngine cleaner
AddressSaltia, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinMother, Mrs R Orchard, Saltia PO, Saltia, South Australia
Enlistment date17 August 1915
Rank on enlistmentDriver
Unit nameHowitzer Brigade 23, Battery 108
AWM Embarkation Roll number13/133/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A7 Medic on 20 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollDriver
Unit from Nominal Roll8th Field Artillery Brigade
FateKilled in Action 25 September 1917
Place of death or woundingZillebeke, near Ypres, Belgium
Age at death23.6
Age at death from cemetery records23
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
15
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Mrs Ruth ORCHARD (formerly PATERSON), and the late John PATERSON, Woolshed Flat, South Australia. Native of Saltia
Family/military connectionsCousins: 4484 Pte Charles Henry HARRISON, 10th Bn, killed in action, 20 September 1917; 3841 Pte Frederick Gordon HARRISON, 25th Machine Gun Company, killed in action, 29 September 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Print format    


© The AIF Project 2024, UNSW Canberra. Not to be reproduced without permission.