The AIF Project

Robert Burnett GELLERT

Regimental number3305
Place of birthYarck, Victoria
SchoolSt George, Carlton, Victoria
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationLabourer
Address7 David Street, Carlton, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Next of kinMother, Mrs R Gellert, 7 David Street, Carlton, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed in Citizen Military Forces, Carlton, Victoria.
Enlistment date13 July 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll14 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name6th Battalion, 11th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/23/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A71 Nestor on 11 October 1915
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll6th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 27 October 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death20
Age at death from cemetery records21
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
46
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Lewis and Rachel GELLERT. Native of Yarck, Victoria
Medals

Military Medal


Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 31
Date: 7 March 1918

Family/military connectionsBrother: 8857 Driver John Robert Christian GELLERT, 4th Field Artillery Brigade, returned to Australia, 15 February 1918; Brother in law: 5785 Pte Alan ANDREWS, 24th Bn, returned to Australia, 6 June 1918.

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