William Edgar Walch PORTER

Regimental number1284
Place of birthBelfast, Ireland
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationStudent
AddressTylden, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation30
Next of kinRev A J Porter, Tylden, Victoria
Enlistment dateNO ENTRY
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll5 October 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name14th Battalion, H Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/31/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A38 Ulysses on 22 December 1914
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll14th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 21 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records33
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
73
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
James and Isabel PORTER. Native of Belfast, Ireland
Medals

Military Medal

'On 11th April 1917 in the attack on the HINDENBURG LINE near RIENCOURT L/Corporal PORTER was in charge of a stretcher squad. He carried out his duties in spite of very heavy enemy fire till finally wounded.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 169
Date: 4 October 1917

Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

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