George HARRIOTT

Regimental number1910
Place of birthNo. 1 Francis Street, Prahran, Victoria
SchoolWickliffe State School and Geelong College, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
AddressWickliffe, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation24
Next of kinFather, G Harriott, Wickliffe, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed for 3.6 years in the 19th Light Horse as 2nd Lieutenant.
Enlistment date21 June 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name24th Battalion, 3rd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/41/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A68 Anchises on 26 August 1915
Regimental number from Nominal RollCommissioned
Rank from Nominal RollCaptain
Unit from Nominal Roll24th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularWas recommended for a Military Cross for carrying ammunitiion to the front members under shell fire.
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingBroodseinde, Passchendaele, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records26
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
101
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: George and Rhoda HARRIOTT, Wickliffe, Victoria
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Taken on strength, 24th Bn, Gallipoli, 12 October 1915.

Appointed Temporary Sergeant, 8 November 1915; 2nd Lt, 8 December 1915.

Disembarked Alexandria from Mudros (general Gallipoli evacuation), 27 December 1915.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 19 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 24 March 1916.

Promoted Temporary Lt, 1 May 1916; Lt, 1 May 1916; Captain, 4 April 1917.

Killed in action, 4 October 1917.

Adjutant reported that 'He was sniped through the chest and almost immediately afterwards was struck by shrapnel. Captain Harriott was buried near De Knoet Farm ... by a party from this Battalion when Lt Col James read the burial service'. Grave lost in subsequent fighting.

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