The AIF Project

John Alfred DUNN

Regimental number2134
Place of birthYoung New South Wales
SchoolBalgowlah Public School, West Manly, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationDriver
AddressGriffith Street, Manly, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Next of kinMother, Mrs Emily Dunn, Griffith Street, Manly, New South Wales
Enlistment date22 April 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll27 April 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name1st Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/18/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A63 Karoola on 16 June 1915
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll1st Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularWounded severely at Lone Pine; spent many months in hospital; then 1 year 5 months in France. Recommended for the DCM on easter Sunday 1917, but the name was never recorded.
FateKilled in Action 02-5 October 1917
Place of death or woundingBroodseinde, Passchendaele, Belgium
Age at death27
Age at death from cemetery records28
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
28
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated in Manly West Cemetery, New South Wales. Headstone inscription reads: 'An Anzac'. Parents: John and Emily Jane (d. 9 November 1935, aged 75; bu. Manly West) DUNN, Edwin Street, Manly. Native of Young, New South Wales~
Family/military connectionsBrother: 17187 Gunner Harry Walter DUNN MM, 2nd Field Artillery Brigade, died of wounds, 4 July 1918.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

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

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