The AIF Project

Gordon Raymond DAVIE

Regimental number2323
Place of birthBothwell, Tasmania
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationShop assistant
AddressBothwell, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Height5' 11.5"
Weight154 lbs
Next of kinFather, George Davie, Bothwell, Tasmania
Previous military serviceNil (exempt area under the Compulsory Military Training scheme)
Enlistment date27 September 1916
Place of enlistmentClaremont, Tasmania
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name40th Battalion, 4th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/57/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A16 Port Melbourne on 21 October 1916
Regimental number from Nominal Roll2323B
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll12th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 6 October 1917
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
65
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Town. Bothwell, Tasmania
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 2322 Pte Maxwell DAVIE, 40th Bn, returned to Australia, 4 May 1917; 5133 Pte Ronald DAVIE, 28th Bn, returned to Australia, 18 July 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Melbourne, 21 October 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 28 December 1916. Admitted to ship's hospital at sea, 8 November 1916 (no details recorded). Marched in to 10th Training Bn, 28 December 1916. Sick, to Parkhouse Hospital, 19 February and 12 March 1917 (no details recorded).

Proceeded overseas to France, 22 May 1917; taken on strength, 12th Bn, 15 June 1917.

Admitted to 3rd Australian Field Ambulance, 7 August 1917 (pyrexia, unknown origin); transferred to New Zealand Stationary Hospital, Hazebrook, 7 August 1917; to 59th General Hospital, St Omer, 9 August 1917; to No 7 Convalescent Depot, Boulogne, 13 August 1917; to No 10 Convalescent Depot, Ecault, 16 August 1917; discharged to Base Details, 10 September 1917; rejoined unit, Belgium, 5 October 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 6 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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