The AIF Project

James Michael WHELAN

Regimental number1926
Place of birthCreswick, Victoria
SchoolSt Augustine's School, Creswick, Victoria
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationLabourer
AddressWonthaggi, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinFather, William Philip Whelan, Watt Street, Wonthaggi, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed in Citizen Forces.
Enlistment date28 January 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll30 June 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name37th Battalion, 2nd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/54/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board RMS Orontes on 16 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll37th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 8 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death20.6
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
139
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William Phillip and Bridget Teresa WHELAN.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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