The AIF Project

Walter Fred ROUND

Regimental number492
Place of birthBrisbane, Queensland
ReligionMethodist
OccupationFarmer
AddressBrisbane, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Next of kinFather, Mr Francis Round, c/o McKenzie & Holland, Northgate Junction, Queensland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date7 March 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name41st Battalion, B Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/58/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A64 Demosthenes on 18 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll41st Battalion
FateKilled in Action 10 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records26
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
134
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Francis and Ada ROUND. Native of Wilston, Queensland
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Sydney, 18 May 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 20 July 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 24 November 1916. Marched out to School, 10 January 1917; rejoined 31st Bn from School, 24 January 1917.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 8 August 1917.

Reported missing in action, 10 October 1917; subsequently determined to be have been killed in action.

3211 Pte T.J. HAYES, 41st Bn, stated, Hurdcott, England, 30 January 1918: 'No. 492 L/Cpl Round W.J. was in the same platoon of the 41st Battalion as myself. We were going into the line on 10th October 1917 up toward Passchendaele, Belgium, when a shell burst close by. He was killed either by a piece of shell or by concussion, but I cannot say which. I am sure he was killed because I saw his body the following morning in the same place.'

Buried in the vicinity of Tyne Cottage.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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