The AIF Project

Lionel Edward BALDOCK

Regimental number1338
Place of birthBooleroo Centre, South Australia
ReligionProtestant
OccupationMasons labourer
AddressBoolaroo Centre, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation24
Next of kinH Baldock, Boolaroo Centre, New South Wales
Enlistment date30 November 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name12th Battalion, 3rd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/29/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A50 Itonus on 15 February 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll12th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted 30 November 1914 - 12th Bn, 3rd Reinforcements. Taken on strength, 12th Bn, 7 May 1915.
FateKilled in Action 19 September 1917
Place of death or woundingBelgium
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
64
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Taken on strength, 12th Bn, 7 May 1915.

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

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