The AIF Project

Cecil Claude ALLEN

Regimental number2520
Place of birthMill Flats, New South Wales
SchoolGlen Williams Public School, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
AddressGlen William, Clarence Town, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Height5' 11.5"
Weight170 lbs
Next of kinFather, John Allen, Glen William, Clarence Town, New South Wales
Previous military serviceServed for 2 years in the 6th Light Horse
Enlistment date13 June 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll13 June 1916
Place of enlistmentNewcastle
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name35th Battalion, 5th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/52/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A11 Ascanius on 25 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll35th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 3 October 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death22
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
124
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John and Mary ALLEN
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 25 October 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 28 December 1916.

Marched in, 9th Training Bn, Durrington, 29 December 1916.

Embarked Folkestone to join the British Expeditionary Force, France, 15 March 1917; marched in, 3rd Australian Divisional Base Depot, Etaples, 16 March 1917.

Taken on strength, 35th Bn, in the field, 4 April 1917.

Appointed lance corporal, in the field, 11 September 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 3 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
Miscellaneous detailsAttestation papers list birthplace as Clarence Town, New South Wales
SourcesNAA: B2455, ALLEN Cecil Claude

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