The AIF Project

Victor Falkland CAREY

Regimental number5803
Place of birthFerntree Gully, Victoria
SchoolState School, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationDriver
AddressSouth Richmond
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation30
Next of kinWife, Mrs Millie Carey, 24 White Street, South Richmond, Victoria
Enlistment date7 August 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name24th Battalion, 16th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/41/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A71 Nestor on 2 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll24th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingYpres, Belgium
Age at death32
Age at death from cemetery records32
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 26), 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
101
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Barnett and Jane; husband of Millie CAREY, 29 McConnell Street, Kensington, Victoria. Native of Fern Tree Gully, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 3287 Pte Lucius George CAREY, 59th Bn, returned to Australia, 12th March 1918; 49 Cpl Bertram Avenue Shier CAREY, 1st Wing Headquarters, Australian Flying Corps, returned to Australia, 3 December 1918; Nephew: 2601 Pte Barnett Lucius CAREY, 2nd Casualty Clearing Station, returned to Australia, 12th July 1919;
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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