The AIF Project

Arthur William HARGRAVES

Regimental number1045
Place of birthLaunceston Tasmania
SchoolConvent School, Launceston, Tasmania
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
Addressc/o Church of England Home, Weldon Street, Burwood, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation29
Next of kinMother, Mrs M. Cumming, corner Kooyong And Dandenong Roads, Malvern, Victoria
Enlistment date24 August 1914
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll23 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name1st Battalion, F Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/18/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board Transport A19 Afric on 18 October 1914
Rank from Nominal RollGunner
Unit from Nominal Roll1st Field Artillery Brigade
FateKilled in Action 31 July 1917
Age at death from cemetery records32
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
11
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Mother: Mary CUMMING (formerly HARGRAVES), 153 Balaclava Road, Caulfield, Victoria, and the late Thomas HARGRAVES. Native of Launceston, Tasmania
Family/military connectionsBrother: R5282 Gunner John Francis HARGRAVES, 7th Field Artillery Brigade, returned to Australia, 11 May 1919.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal
Miscellaneous detailsTrue name: Ambrose William HARGRAVES

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