The AIF Project

Charles EZZY

Regimental number3059
Place of birthHamilton, Newcastle, New South Wales
SchoolPublic School, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFireman
AddressFrome Street, East Moree, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation27
Height5' 7.75"
Weight132 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs Margaret Ezzy
Enlistment date10 August 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll10 August 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name17th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/34/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A29 Suevic on 20 December 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll55th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 26 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death29
Age at death from cemetery records29
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), 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
160
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Andrew John and Margaret EZZY, Frome Street, East Moree, New South Wales. Native of Hamilton, New SOuth Wales
Other details

War service: taken on strength, 55th Bn, Tel el Kebir, 11 March 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 19 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 29 June 1916.

Admitted to 38th Casualty Clearing Station, 3 November 1916; transferred to 3rd Stationary Hospital, Rouen, 4 November 1916; to England, 11 November 1916, and admitted to 1st Southern General Hospital, Birmingham, 13 November 1916. Tansferred to 2nd Auxiliary Hospital, 29 November 1916; discharged to No. 2 command Depot, Weymouth, 2 December 1916. Admitted to Military Hospital, Bulford, 14 December 1916; discharged to duty, 4 January 1917; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 22 days. Proceeded overseas to France, 25 February 1917; rejoined 55th Bn, 6 April 1917.

Killed in action, 26 September 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Mother wrote to Base Records, 16 December 1918, complaining of non-receipt of her son's personal possessions; Base Records replied, 31 December 1918, that they had been transported on SS 'Barunga', which had been torpedoed and all its cargo lost.

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