Frank Gordon GRANGE

Regimental number894
Place of birthNewtown, New South Wales
ReligionCS
OccupationClerk
Address'Waldraur', Waterview Street, Five Dock, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinMother, Mrs G L Grange, 'Tunbridge', Balfour Street, Woolstonecraft, Sydney, New South Wales
Enlistment date26 February 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll25 February 1915
Place of enlistmentLiverpool, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentSergeant
Unit name17th Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/34/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A32 Themistocles on 12 May 1915
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll17th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Distinguished Conduct Medal (Altered to Military Medal)


Work on 9 October 1917 at Passchendaele.
Recommendation date: 14 October 1917

FateKilled in Action 9 October 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
82
Medals

Military Medal

'For conspicuous gallantry and daring during attack on 9th October, 1917, on PASSCHENDAELE RIDGE. He put great confidence into his platoon. At one time his men were in a particularly waterlogged piece of ground directly in front of a machine gun, which was holding up his advance. He kept his men together and on several occasions stopped to drag bogged men out of shell holes, knowing that every man was required for the attack to succeed. He fell badly wounded, but his platoon so inspired by his example pushed forward and captured the machine gun position inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 76
Date: 23 May 1918

Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Medals: Military Medal, 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal