The AIF Project

Cyril Henry CLARKE

Regimental number4483
Place of birthRailton, Tasmania
SchoolState School, Tasmania
Other trainingNil
OccupationLabourer
AddressLietinna, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Next of kinFather, Mr F H Clarke, Lietinna, Tasmania
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date6 October 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name12th Battalion, 14th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/29/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A69 Warilda on 8 February 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll52nd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death24.9
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.

Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Henry Frederick and Ada Maria CLARKE, Lietinna, Tasmania. Native of Railton, Tasmania
Family/military connectionsUncle: Major George Darling GOULD, 26th Bn, died in Brisbane on the way to the front, 8 June 1915; Cousins: 6081 Pte Charles William WINTER, 12th Bn, killed in action, 10 April 1917; 3206 Pte Phillip Eric WINTER, 47th Bn, killed in action, 6 August 1916.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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