Alexander Robert TURNER

Regimental number2886
Place of birthArarat, Victoria
SchoolArarat State School, Victoria
ReligionMethodist
OccupationLabourer
AddressArarat, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Next of kinFather, George Turner, c/o W Ross, Vincent Street, Ararat, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date6 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name14th Battalion, 9th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/31/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A20 Hororata on 27 September 1915
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll14th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 16 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death25
Age at death from cemetery records25
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
74
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: George and Phillipa Jane TURNER, Vincent Street, Ararat, Victoria
Family/military connectionsCousins: Pte W. TURNER, killed in action; Pte J. TURNER, killed in action [cannot be further identfied].
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Joined unit, Ismailia, 8 January 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 1 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 8 June 1916.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 20 May 1917.

Wounded in action, 27 September 1917 (shrapnel wound, right leg), and admitted to 2nd Australian Field Ambulance; discharged to duty from 1st Australian Divisional Rest Station, 5 October 1917; rejoined Bn, 6 October 1917.

Reported as missing in action, 16 October 1917; Court of Enquiry held in the field, 13 March 1918, confirmed fate as 'killed in action', 16 October 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal