Regimental number | 2636 |
Place of birth | Harden, New South Wales |
Place of birth | Young, New South Wales |
School | Lexington, Kentucky, USA |
Religion | Protestant |
Occupation | Selector |
Address | Netherdale, Mackay, Queensland |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 43 |
Height | 5' 9" |
Weight | 142 lbs |
Next of kin | Brother, William Benjamin Cumming, Ipswich, Queensland |
Previous military service | Nil |
Enlistment date | |
Place of enlistment | Mackay, Queensland |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 49th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/66/3 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A40 Ceramic on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 49th Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Unknown |
Age at death | 42 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The 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. |
Panel number, Roll of Honour, Australian War Memorial | 148 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: Benjamin CUMMING and Mary GAMMON |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Embarked Sydney, 7 October 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 21 November 1916. Proceeded overseas to France, 8 January 1917; taken on strength, 49th Bn, 15 January 1917. Killed in action, Belgium, 7 June 1917. Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal Second oldest brother, W.B. Cumming, wrote to Base Records, 20 May 1921: ' ... there is a brother older than myself. I have not seen him for years. To give a little family history. We were doubly orphaned about 35 years ago. There were no relatives of either parent in the country. My deceased brother John and I kept in touch always. I found the cash to send him to America to study, and upon his return to Queensland he made my home his home until the time he joined the A.I.F. I do not think I am wrong in stating that he did not see his elder brother twice in 25 years, and I have scarcely seen him a dozen times in over 30 years ... I can give no other information concerning surviving relatives of the deceased soldier. I assume they do survive.' |