Thomas Leslie SMITH

Regimental number6660
Place of birthBurraga, New South Wales
SchoolBurraga Public School, New South Wales
Other trainingOfficer Training, Duntroon, and 5th Training Bn, Rollestone Camp, Salisbury Plains, England
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationCarpenter
AddressEnfield, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation24
Next of kinMother, Mrs E E Smith, Boyle Street, Enfield, New South Wales
Previous military serviceEnlisted first in Home Defence Forces, doing duty at Holdsworthy Concentration Camp in 1915; discharged for purpose of enlisting in AIF.
Enlistment date10 July 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll19 June 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name20th Battalion, 19th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/37/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A18 Wiltshire on 7 February 1917
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll20th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 30 September 1917
Place of death or woundingYpres, 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
92
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Paretns: Thomas and Emma SMITH. Native of Burraga, New South Wales
Family/military connectionsCousins: four of whom were killed.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal