The AIF Project

James Lovel SIMONS

Regimental number4865
Place of birthRhyanna, New South Wales
SchoolChristian Brothers' School, Dubbo, New South Wales
Other trainingCompositor
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationCordial maker
AddressBon Accord, Doncaster Avenue, Kensington, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation39
Next of kinWife, Mrs. S. Simons, Bon Accord, Doncaster Avenue, Kensington, New South Wales
Previous military serviceServed as a Volunteer, Dubbo, New South Wales.
Enlistment date31 August 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll14 September 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name1st Battalion, 15th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/18/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A15 Star Of England on 8 March 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll55th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularFirst wounded at Fleurbaix, France on 19 July 1916 and then again on 1 February 1917.
FateKilled in Action 19 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death41
Age at death from cemetery records41
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), 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
161
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John and Ann SIMONS, 'Bon Accord', Jellicoe Avenue South, Randwick, New South Wales; husband of Mrs A. SIMONS. Native of Rhyanna, Goulburn, New South Wales~
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 1383 Pte Richard Clyde SIMONS, 3rd Bn, killed in action, Gallipoli, 29 April 1915; 2443 Pte John Sidney SIMONS, 55th Bn/Australian Employment Company, returned to Australia, 11 January 1918.~
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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