The AIF Project

John GAVAGHAN

Regimental number2066
Place of birthLecarrow, Charlestown, Co Mayo, Ireland
SchoolLecarrow
Age on arrival in Australia27
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationLabourer
AddressTower Hotel, Cr Russell & Lonsdale Streets, Melbourne, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation30
Next of kinFather, Frank Gavaghan, Charlestown, Co Mayo, Ireland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date23 May 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll31 May 1916
Place of enlistmentSeymour, Victoria
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name37th Battalion, 3rd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/54/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A9 Shropshire on 25 September 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll37th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted 23 May 1916 - 37th Bn, 3rd Reinforcements; taken on strength, 37th Bn, 15 January 1917.
FateKilled in Action 07-9 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death32
Age at death from cemetery records32
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.

Panel number, Roll of Honour,
  Australian War Memorial
128
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Francis and Anne GAVAGHAN, Co Mayo, Ireland
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Melbourne, 25 September 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 11 November 1916; proceeded overseas to France, 20 December 1916; marched in to 3rd Australian Division Base Depot, Etaples, France, 21 December 1916; marched out to unit, 14 January 1917; taken on strength of 37th Bn, 15 January 1917.

Killed in action, France, 8 June 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, GAVAGHAN John

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