Regimental number | 431 |
Place of birth | Maldon, Victoria |
School | St Mary's (Catholic) School, Castlemaine, Victoria |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Occupation | Rail planer |
Address | Bowden Street, Castlemaine, Victoria |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 26 |
Next of kin | Father, Henry Eldridge, Bowden Street, Castlemaine, Victoria |
Previous military service | Nil |
Enlistment date | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 38th Battalion, A Company |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/55/1 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A54 Runic on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Lance Corporal |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 38th Battalion |
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular | He was a noted Footballer of the Castlemaine District. |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Messines, Belgium |
Age at death | 27 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 27 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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 | 129 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: Henry and Ellen ELDRIDGE, Bowen Street, Castlemaine, Victoria. Native of Maldon, Victoria |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Embarked from Melbourne, 20 June 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 10 August 1916. Proceeded overseas to France, 22 November 1916. Promoted Lance Corporal, 4 June 1917. Killed in action, 7-9 June 1917. Base Records informed Mr H. Eldridge, 7 August 1919: '... he was killed in action, together with several others, on the morning of 8.6.17. The party were sitting talking, having just completed "digging in" when they were killed instantaneously by the burst of a high explosive shell in the front line trench. He was buried during the afternoon (under fire) in a large shell hole a few yards back of the trench, the approximate position of same being 1500 yards South South west of Messines. A cross was not erected at the time owing to the fact that operations were in progress.' Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal ~ |