Thomas George HEFFERNAN

Regimental number26735
Place of birthMacquarie Plains, Tasmania
SchoolGlenora School
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationLabourer
AddressMacquarie Plains, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Next of kinMother, Mrs M A Salter, Bushy Park, Macquarie Plains, Tasmania
Enlistment date28 October 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll27 October 1915
Rank on enlistmentGunner
Unit nameField Artillery Brigade 14, Reinforcement 5
AWM Embarkation Roll number13/41/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A15 Port Sydney on 7 September 1916
Rank from Nominal RollDriver
Unit from Nominal Roll14th Field Artillery Brigade
FateDied of wounds 1 October 1917
Place of death or woundingFrance
Age at death27
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
18
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Son of Mary SALTER (formerly HEFFERNAN), Main Road, Glenorchy, Tasmania, and the late Thomas HEFFERNAN. Native of Macquarie Plains, Tasmania
Family/military connectionsUncle: 1617A Pte Sydney BUTLER, 49th Bn, killed in action, 12 October 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal