The AIF Project

Albert Henry GILBERT

Regimental number3024
Place of birthPrahran, Victoria
SchoolState School, James St, Perth, Western Australia
ReligionNo religion
OccupationLetter carrier
Address435 Bagot Road, Subiaco, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation27
Next of kinFather, Alfred Gilbert, 435 Bagot Road, Subiaco, Western Australia
Previous military serviceServed in the Citizen Military Forces.
Enlistment date5 October 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll28 September 1915
Rank on enlistmentProvisional CPL
Unit name28th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/45/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A7 Medic on 18 January 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll28th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death28
Age at death from cemetery records28
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
113
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Alfred and Caroline GILBERT, 105 Townshend Road, Subiaco, Western Australia. Native of Prahran, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 2266 Trooper Charles Edward GILBERT, 4th Australian Bn, Imperial Camel Corps, died of wounds, 10 November 1917; 4541 Sergeant Robert William GILBERT, 16th Bn, died of wounds, 21 November 1916.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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