The AIF Project

Charles BURGESS

Regimental number2794
Place of birthDowne, Kent, England
SchoolDowne National School, Kent, England
Age on arrival in Australia31
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
AddressGeeveston, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation30
Height5' 8.75"
Weight140 lbs
Next of kinFather, Edward Burgess, Geeveston, Tasmania
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date16 October 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll2 February 1916
Place of enlistmentLiverpool, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name40th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/57/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A67 Orsova on 6 December 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll30th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Age at death37
Age at death from cemetery records37
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
116
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Edward and Emma BURGESS, Lavender Cottage, Downe, Kent, England
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Embarked Alexandria, 6 June 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 16 June 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 31 December 1916; taken on strength, 30th Bn, 7 January 1917.

Wounded in action (remaining at duty), 26 February 1917.

Killed in action, 12 October 1917.

Handwritten notation on Form B103: 'Buried'.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, BURGESS Charles

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