The AIF Project

Ernest HARPER

Regimental number6020
Place of birthLeichhardt, Sydney, New South Wales
SchoolLeichhardt Public School, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationDealer
Addressc/o William McGee, Henry Street, Penrith, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation28
Height5' 3"
Weight126 lbs
Next of kinSister, Mrs F Harvey, Myra Road, Dulwich Hill, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date8 March 1916
Place of enlistmentBathurst, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name1st Battalion, 19th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/18/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A18 Wiltshire on 22 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll1st Battalion
FateKilled in Action 5 October 1917
Place of death or woundingBroodseinde, Passchendaele, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records29
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
29
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Mary HARPER. Native of New South Wales
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 22 August 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 13 October 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 13 December 1916; taken on strength, 1st Bn, 8 February 1917.

To Summer Rest Camp, 11 May 1917; rejoined unit, 18 May 1917.

Found guilty, 26 September 1917, of when on active service being absent without leave from 2130, 24 September, till 0930, 26 September 1917: awarded forfeiture of 14 days' pay and confined to barracks for 7 days; total forfeiture: 17 days' pay. Killed in action, Belgium, 2-5 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, HARPER Ernest

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