Regimental number | 475 |
Place of birth | Footscray, Victoria |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Occupation | Labourer |
Address | 44 Windsor Street, Footscray, Victoria |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 21 |
Next of kin | Father, Michael Quirke, 44 Windsor Street, Footscray, Victoria |
Previous military service | 65th Infantry; Served in the Senior Cadets for 4 years; in the Citizen Military Forces for 2 months (still serving at time of AIF enlistment). |
Enlistment date | |
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | Machine Gun Company 6, Reinforcement 7 |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 24/11/3 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A38 Ulysses on |
Regimental number from Nominal Roll | 475C |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 21st Machine Gun Company |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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 | 179 |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Embarked from Melbourne, 25 October 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 28 December 1916. Proceeded overseas to France, 10 March 1917. Taken on strength, 21st Machine Gun Company from 6th Machine Gun Company, 28 April 1917. Killed in action, Belgium, 20 September 1917. Buried in Belgian Battery Cemetery, 1 mile South West of Ypres. Base Records wrote, 30 June 1922, to clarify a photograph purporting to be of the grave: 'It was later ascertained [by the Imperial War Graves Commission that the regimental particulars of these soldiers [buried in the cemetery] (including those of your son) were first inscribed on a collective memorial erected in the abovenamed cemetery, and when subsequently it was found necessary to replace this, by some unfortunate mischance, individual crosses erected in such manner as to imply actual graves were substituted in place Q hence the erroneous reports of burial originating.' Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |