The AIF Project

Henry Albert ALLPORT

Regimental number3101
Place of birthLaggan, New South Wales
SchoolPicton Public School, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
AddressRedground Road, Crookwell, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation30
Height5' 10"
Weight161 lbs
Next of kinFather, Charles Allport, Redground Road, Crookwell, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date17 October 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll16 October 1916
Place of enlistmentPicton, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name55th Battalion, 8th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/72/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A29 Suevic on 11 November 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll35th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of death or woundingFrance
Age at death29
Age at death from cemetery records31
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: Charles and Mary ALLPORT, Crookwell, New South Wales. Native of Laggan, New South Wales
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 11 November 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 30 January 1917.

Marched in, 14th Training Bn, England, 1 February 1917.

Marched out to Windmill Hill Camp, Hurdcott, 28 April 1917; transferred to 62nd Bn.

Embarked Southampton to reinforce the 3rd Australian Division, France, 23 August 1917; marched in, 3rd Australian Divisional Base Depot, Rouelles, 24 August 1917.

Taken on strength, 35th Bn, in the field, 1 September 1917.

Reported missing, in the field, 12 October 1917.

Court of Inquiry held in the field, 15 May 1918, pronounced fate as 'Killed in action, Belgium, 12 October 1917'.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, ALLPORT Henry Albert

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