The AIF Project

Robert ATKINSON

Regimental number358
Place of birthEast Greta, New South Wales
SchoolPublic School, New South Wales
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationLabourer
AddressWeston, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Height5' 2.5"
Weight116 lbs
Next of kinFather, James Atkinson, Fifth Street, Weston, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil (lived in exempt area under Compulsory Military Training scheme)
Enlistment date17 January 1916
Place of enlistmentWest Maitland, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name34th Battalion, B Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/51/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A20 Hororata on 2 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll34th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death21.10
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
123
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 2 May 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 23 June 1916.

Found guilty, 20 October 1916, of being absent without leave from midnight, 20 October, until midnight, 22 October 1916: awarded 12 days' Field Punishment No 2, and forfeited 14 days' pay.

Proceeded overseas to France, 21 November 1916.

Marched out to Bomb School, 28 January 1917; rejoined 34th Bn, in the field, 5 February 1917.

Detached to Small Arms Course, 2 August 1917; rejoined Bn from detachment, 21 August 1917.

Killed in action, 12 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, ATKINSON Robert

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