The AIF Project

Aaron GOLDSTONE

Regimental number887
Place of birthAbbotsford, Victoria
SchoolCambridge Street State School, Collingwood, Victoria
ReligionJewish
OccupationGrocer
AddressCollingwood, Melbourne, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23.7
Height5' 7"
Weight146 lbs
Next of kinFather, Harris Goldstone, 45 Derby Street, Collingwood, Melbourne, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed for 4 years in the Citizen Military Forces.
Enlistment date10 March 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll20 March 1916
Rank on enlistmentLance Corporal
Unit name37th Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/54/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A34 Persic on 3 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Sergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll37th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 8 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death24.9
Age at death from cemetery records24
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: Harris and Rachael GOLDSTONE, 99 Gore Street, Fitzroy, Victoria
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Melbourne, 3 June 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 25 July 1916.

Admitted to Fargo Hospital, 11 October 1916 (tonsillitis); date of discharge not recorded.

Proceeded overseas to France, 22 November 1916.

Admitted to 10th Field Ambulance, 1 January 1917 (accidental self-inflicted gun shot wound, right hand and arm); transferred to 2nd Australian Casualty Clearing Station, 1 January 1917; to 8th Stationary Hospital, Wimereux, 10 January 1917; discharged to Base Details, Etaples, 20 February 1917; rejoined unit, in the field, 2 March 1917.

Promoted Temporary Corporal, 17 April 1917.

Appointed Lance Sergeant, 27 May 1917.

Killed in action, 8 June 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, GOLDSTONE Aaron
Red Cross File No 1180408M

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