The AIF Project

Wilfred SINGLE

Regimental number4366
Place of birthWilloughby, New South Wales
SchoolPublic School, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
Address5 Chapman Steps, Forrest Lodge, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinFather, John Single, 5 Chapman Steps, Forrest Lodge, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date24 May 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name29th Battalion, 11th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/46/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A19 Afric on 3 November 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll29th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 26-27 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death23
Age at death from cemetery records23
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
116
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John and Elizabeth SINGLE, 'Troja', 5 Chapman's Avenue, Forrest Lodge, Sydney
Family/military connectionsCousins: [286] Captain Raymond Vallack SINGLE, 56th Bn, killed in action, 26 September 1917; Lieutenant Colonel Clive Vallack SINGLE DSO, Australian Army Medical Corps, returned to Australia, 20 July 1919; 19359 Corporal Roy Vallack SINGLE MM, 3rd Divisional Ammunition Column, returned to Australia, 10 May 1919; Captain R. THOMPSON, killed in action at Polygon Wood, 26/27 September 1917; 494 Sergeant John Alexander DIGBY, 13th Bn, killed in action, Gallipoli, 3 May 1915; 15557 Bombardier Francis Dudley Maxted DIGBY, 10th Field Artillery Brigade, killed in action, 29 September 1918; Uncle: Sergeant FRASER, killed in action in France [cannot be further identified].~
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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