Regimental number | 2130 |
Place of birth | Windsor, New South Wales |
School | Orange High School, New South Wales |
Religion | Methodist |
Occupation | Farmer |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 19.7 |
Height | 5' 11" |
Weight | 175 lbs |
Next of kin | Mrs Mary Jane Baker, Currajong Street, Parkes, New South Wales |
Previous military service | Nil |
Enlistment date | |
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll | |
Place of enlistment | Parkes, New South Wales |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 53rd Battalion, 4th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/70/3 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A44 Vestalia on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Corporal |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 53rd Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Age at death from cemetery records | 21 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The 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 | 156 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Commemorated in Bogan Gate Cemetery, New South Wales. Parents: Walter and Evelyn Jane BAKER, Currajong Street, Parkes, New South Wales. Native of Sackville, Hawkesbury, New South Wales |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Embarked Sydney, 11 July 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 9 September 1916. Admitted to 1st Australian Dermatological Hospital, Bulford, 15 February 1917; discharged from hospital, 11 April 1917; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 56 days. Promoted Temporary Corporal, 1 February 1917. Proceeded overseas to France, and reverted to Private, 13 September 1917; taken on strength, 53rd Bn, in the field, 19 September 1917. Killed in action, 27 September 1917. Statement, Red Cross File No 0190902L, 2183 Corporal W. JEMMETT, B Company, 53rd Bn, 23 January 1918: 'I saw him killed by a High Explosive shell at Polygon Wood, during a hop over. He was blown to pieces, and there would be no hope of him being buried.' Second statement, 2474 Lance Corporal R. QUANTRULL, D Company, 53rd Bn, 22 January 1918: 'He was killed on the evening of September 26th while going up to the hop-over tape at Polygon Wood. I heard him call out that he was hit but did not see his body. The body was found there subsequently by another Battn who sent in his paybook and disc as taken from his dead body.' Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |
Sources | NAA: B2455, BAKER Eric Manning
Red Cross File No 0190902L |