The AIF Project

Andrew William HALL

Regimental number711
Date of birth27 February 1887
Place of birthBroke, via Singleton, New South Wales
SchoolWhittingham Public School, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationWater policeman
Address44 Henry Street, Waverley, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation28
Next of kinWife, Mrs Penninah Lydia Hall, 44 Henry Street, Waverley, New South Wales
Enlistment date5 May 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name18th Battalion, B Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/35/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board Transport A40 Ceramic on 25 June 1915
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll18th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 29 September 1916
Place of death or woundingYpres, Belgium
Age at death29
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
85
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated in All Saints' Anglican Church, Singleton. Parents: Thomas Henry and Mary Ann HALL; husband of Mrs P.L. HALL, of 23 Alexandria Street, Arncliffe, New South Wales. Native of Broke, New South Wales.
Other details

War service: embarked at Sydney 25 June 1915; proceeded to join Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 16 August 1915; promoted Corporal, 20 November 1915; Sergeant, 8 December 1915.

Disembarked ex Mudros, 9 January 1916 (general Gallipoli evacuation); taken on strength 5th Machine Gun Company, 8 March 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 17 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles 23 March 1916.

Western Front: transferred to 18th Bn, Belgium, 4 September 1916; listed as missing, 29 September 1916; Court of Enquiry held 3 February 1917 found that he was a member of a raiding party and that his death occurred on or around that date.

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

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