The AIF Project

Stanley John THOMAS

Regimental number614
Place of birthSebastopol, Victoria
SchoolState School No. 1167, Sebastopol, Victoria
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationLabourer
AddressBallarat, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Next of kinMother, Mrs Margaret Hannah Thomas, Albert Street, Sebastopol, Ballarat, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed in the Cadets.
Enlistment date30 March 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name39th Battalion, B Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/56/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A11 Ascanius on 27 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll39th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death19.9
Age at death from cemetery records19
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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
131
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Margaret Hannah THOMAS, Albert Street, Sebastopol, Victoria
Family/military connectionsCousins: 2152 Pte Leslie Theophilus JONES, 7th Bn, killed in action, Lone Pine, Gallipoli, 8-9 August 1915; 969 Pte Thomas Talisin JONES, 23rd Bn, killed in action, Pozieres, France, 4 August 1916; Captain Roy Hector JONES, 24th Bn, returned to Australia, 12 May 1918 (died from the effects of war service, 8 February 1921); Brother-in-law: RQMS G H WILLIAMS.~
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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