The AIF Project

Roy Richard WEIR

Regimental number3290
Place of birthNhill, Victoria
SchoolNhill State School, Victoria
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationPlumber
AddressTownsend Street, Nhill, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Height5' 4.75"
Weight124 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs B Weir, Townsend Street, Nhill, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date17 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name23rd Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/40/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A73 Commonwealth on 26 November 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll57th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 25 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death20
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
164
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: James and Amy Catherine WEIR
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Taken on strength, 58th Bn, Tel el Kebir, 23 February 1916; transferred to 57th Bn, 26 April 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 17 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 24 June 1916.

Detached to 5th Army Sniping School, 22 February 1917; rejoined Bn, 7 March 1917. To England on furlough, 2 August 1917; rejoined Bn, 15 August 1917.

Killed in action, 25 September 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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