The AIF Project

Thomas Joseph DUGGAN

Regimental number4035
Place of birthWoodstock, Tasmania
SchoolState School, Tasmania
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationLabourer
AddressWoodstock, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinMother, Mrs F Duggan, Woodstock, Tasmania
Enlistment date30 August 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name15th Battalion, 12th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/32/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT RMS Orontes on 24 November 1915
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll47th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Military Medal


Recommendation date: 16 August 1917

Other details from Roll of Honour CircularHe had a cousin killed, and another won the Military Medal.
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death22
Age at death from cemetery records22
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
143
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Lawrence Francis and Fanny DUGGAN, Pelverata, Tasmania
Medals

Military Medal

'For consistent gallantry and devotion to duty during operations .... WYTSCHAETE from 1st to 16th August 1917 as a Scout and patrol leader. This N.C.O. volunteered for an extra [ ... ?] of duty starting a week before the Battalion came into the line and remained right through, going out on patrols every night and displaying right through a very excellent example of devotion to duty and fearlessness.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 19
Date: 14 February 1918

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