The AIF Project

John Samuel Thomson RIGBY

Regimental number1548
Place of birthColeraine, Victoria
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationSawmiller
AddressTalangatuk East, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation27
Height5' 5.75"
Weight155 lbs
Next of kinThomas Rigby, Telangatuk East, Victoria
Previous military serviceRifle Club No.6, Balmoral
Enlistment date5 March 1915
Place of enlistmentBalmoral, Victoria
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name23rd Battalion, 1st Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/40/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A14 Euripides on 8 May 1915
Regimental number from Nominal RollCommissioned
Rank from Nominal RollLieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll6th Trench Mortar Battery
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records29
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
94
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Thomas and Martha RIGBY, 'Hybla', Pallamallawa, New South Wales. Native of Coleraine, Victoria
Medals

Military Medal


Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 184
Date: 14 December 1916

Family/military connectionsBrother: [730] Lt Frank RIGBY, 21st Bn, killed in action, 4 October 1917.
SourcesNAA: B2455, RIGBY John Samuel Thomson

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