The AIF Project

Kenneth Gartrelle CONNELLY

Regimental number2125
Place of birthElsternwick, Victoria
SchoolCaulfield Grammar School, Victoria
Other trainingDiploma, Agricultural College
ReligionBaptist
OccupationAgriculturist
AddressWalleringa Mansions, Neutral Bay, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Next of kinMother, Mrs A L Peters c/o H H Peters, Daily Telegraph, Sydney, New South Wales
Enlistment date6 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name18th Battalion, 4th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/35/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A8 Argyllshire on 30 September 1915
Regimental number from Nominal RollCommissioned
Rank from Nominal RollLieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll18th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Distinguished Conduct Medal


Recommendation date: "Unspecified"

FateKilled in Action 3 November 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death27
Age at death from cemetery records27
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
85
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Son of Annie Louise PETERS, Sydney. Native of Victoria
Family/military connectionsCousins: Captain Clive Emerson CONNELLY, 14th Bn, killed in action, 28 August 1915; Major Eric Winfiedl CONNELLY DSO, 7th Bn, died of wounds, 9 September 1918; 2nd Lt Kenneth Allan BELL, 19th Bn, killed in action, 26 July 1916.

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