The AIF Project

Frank GRIFFIN

Regimental number1283
Place of birthDublin, Ireland
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationLabourer
AddressSydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation31
Height5' 8"
Weight150 lbs
Next of kinBrother, William Griffin, Coburg, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date28 August 1915
Place of enlistmentGoulburn, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentSapper
Unit nameMining Corps, Company 3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A38 Ulysses on 20 February 1916
Rank from Nominal RollSapper
Unit from Nominal Roll3rd Tunnelling Company
FateKilled in Action 28 June 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
26
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John and Mary GRIFFIN, Riddell's Creek, Victoria. Native of Tylden, Victoria
Other details

War service: Western Front

Found guilty at sea, 3 May 1916, of stealing beer, 2 May 1916: awarded 21 days' Field Punishment No 1; disembarked Marseilles, 5 May 1916; detrained at Hazebrouck, 8 May 1916.

Found guilty in the field, 16 March 1917, of being drunk whilst on active service, 13 March 1917: awarded a 5/- fine.

Killed in action, 28 June 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Print format    


© The AIF Project 2024, UNSW Canberra. Not to be reproduced without permission.