The AIF Project

Kenneth Richard FRAZER

Regimental number452
Place of birthBinnaway, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
AddressBinnaway PO, Binnaway, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Height5' 5.75"
Weight125 lbs
Next of kinFather, Francis Stephen Frazer, Binnaway PO, Binnaway, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date22 January 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll8 January 1916
Place of enlistmentLiverpool, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name36th Battalion, B Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/53/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A72 Beltana on 13 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll36th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe 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.

Family/military connectionsBrother: 1246 Pte Horace Ernest FRAZER, 7th Light Horse Regiment, died of wounds, 29 October 1916.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 13 May 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 9 July 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 22 November 1916.

Detached to 9th Brigade Heaquarters, 11 July 1917; rejoined 36th Bn, 10 August 1917.

Reported missing in action, 12 October 1917.

Court of Enquiry, 4 April 1918, concluded: 'Killed in action, Belgium, 12 October 1917'.

Red Cross File, statement, 430 Pte J.R. ELTON, 34th Bn (formerly 36th Bn), 16 September 1918: 'He was killed by a shell at Passchendaele during the attack out in the open. He was knocked about a good bit. His body was buried on the battlefield.'

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, FRAZER Kenneth Richard
Red Cross File 1110414C

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