The AIF Project

Patrick Francis HAWLEY

Regimental number1545
Place of birthCharleston, North Queensland
SchoolChristian Brothers
Other trainingServed some time to Dentistry
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationFarmer
AddressNeerkol, via Rockhampton, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinMother, Mrs Mary Hawley, Neerkol, Queensland Central Railway, Queensland
Enlistment date22 July 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll21 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name31st Battalion, 1st Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/48/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A41 Bakara on 5 November 1915
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll8th Trench Mortar Battery
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularVery clever at school, selected land at 16 years. Worked hard, enlisted soon after 21 years. (details from mother)
FateKilled in Action 27 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death23
Age at death from cemetery records23
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
20
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Thomas and Mary HAWLEY, Stanwell, Queensland. Native of Charleston, Queensland
Family/military connectionsBrother: 733 Pte John Michael HAWLEY, drowned off Troopship 'Suevic', 18 August 1917.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

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

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