The AIF Project

Jasper COCKINGTON

Regimental number1359
Place of birthPort Adelaide, South Australia
SchoolPulteney Street School, South Australia
ReligionProtestant
OccupationGardener
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinF Cockington, Wirrabara, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date28 November 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name16th Battalion, 3rd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/33/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A54 Runic on 19 February 1915
Regimental number from Nominal Roll1359A
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll16th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 August 1917
Place of death or woundingGapaard Farm, Messines, Belgium
Age at death23
Age at death from cemetery records23
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
79
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated in Cheltenham Cemetery, South Australia. Parents: Frank and Amelia Jane COCKINGTON, Princes Street, Alberton, South Australia. Native of Port Adelaide, Australia
Family/military connectionsUncle: 4447 Pte Frederick Arthur JONES, 48th Bn, killed in action, 6 August 1916; Cousins: 1287 Sergeant Robert Clair JONES, 1st Light Horse Regiment, returned to Australia, 15 May 1919; 1941 Pte Ernest Vickery JONES, 10th Bn, killed in action, 26 June 1916, 1111 Pte Keith David JONES, 11th Field Artillery Brigade, died of wounds, 2 March 1918; [1026] Lt William Gould HARRINGTON, Australian Flying Corps, returned to Australia, 18 October 1919.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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