John TAYLOR

Regimental number3604
Place of birthIpswich, Queensland
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationTimber worker
AddressBrisbane, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation44
Height5' 11"
Weight180 lbs
Next of kinBrother, Winterbottom Taylor, Millbong, Fassifern Line, Queensland
Previous military serviceNil (Previously rejected for enlistment on the grounds of being medically unfit.)
Enlistment date8 November 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name4th Pioneer Battalion, Reinforcement 9
AWM Embarkation Roll number14/16/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A33 Ayrshire on 24 January 1917
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll49th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted 8 November 1916 - 4th Pioneer Bn, 9th Reinforcements. Taken on strength, 49th Bn, 25 August 1917.
FateKilled in Action 29 September 1917
Place of death or woundingBelgium
Age at death45
Age at death from cemetery records45
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
149
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Sydney, 24 January 1917; disembarked Devonport, England, 12 April 1917, and marched in to 4th Pioneer Bn, Fovant. Transferred to 49th Bn, Codford, 11 July 1917. Proceeded overseas to France, 6 August 1917; taken on strength, 49th Bn, 25 August 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 29 September 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal