The AIF Project

Gordon Roy HEATHCOTE

Regimental number422
Place of birthKew, Victoria
SchoolWahrungah, Williamstown, Richmond and Kew Schools
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationOptician
Address31 Wellington Street, Kew, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Next of kinFather, Charles Heathcote, 31 Wellington Street, Kew, Victoria
Previous military serviceHe was connected with the 49th Infantry Division for some years and was a Colour Sergeant.
Enlistment date28 August 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll28 August 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 15, Reinforcement 6
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/20/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A17 Port Lincoln on 20 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll4th Machine Gun Battalion
FateKilled in Action 16 October 1917
Age at death24.9
Age at death from cemetery records24
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
178
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Charles and Mary HEATHCOTE, 31 Wellington Street, Kew, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrother: 2192 Pte Claude Charles HEATHCOTE, 59th Bn, returned to Australia, 3 July 1917; Cousin to three others, one of whom was killed and one of whom [734 Corporal Albert Wallace HEATHCOTE MM, 3rd Bn, killed in action, 3 May 1917] gained a Military Medal.' (Details from father)
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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