The AIF Project

Denis QUINLAN

Regimental number5395
Place of birthCobar, New South Wales
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationShearing expert
Address98 Flinders Street, Darlinghurst, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation29
Next of kinSister, Mrs Catherine Margery Flint, 11A Alma Street, Darlington, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date10 March 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name20th Battalion, 14th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/37/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A18 Wiltshire on 22 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll20th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
92
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Sydney, 22 August 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 13 October 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 13 December 1916; joined 20th Bn, 17 December 1916.

Reported as missing in action, 20 September 1917; confirmed as killed in action, 20 September 1917. Buried.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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