The AIF Project

Leslie Joseph HOWARD

Regimental number833
Place of birthNumbaa, New South Wales
SchoolPublic School
ReligionRoman Catholic
AddressMrs Augusta Howard, Harden, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Next of kinMother
Enlistment date19 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentDriver
Unit name(1st) Divisional Train, 4th Company, Army Service Corps
AWM Embarkation Roll number25/14/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board TRANSPORT A19 Afric on 18 October 1914
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board TRANSPORT A24 Benalla on 19 October 1914
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board A2 Geelong on 19 October 1914
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A1 Hymettus on 22 October 1914
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A7 Medic on 2 November 1914
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A7 Medic on 20 October 1914
Rank from Nominal RollGunner
Unit from Nominal Roll11th Field Artillery Brigade
FateKilled in Action 17 October 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death28
Age at death from cemetery records27
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
17
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: George and Augusta HOWARD, 19 Railway Cottage, Harden, New South Wales. Native of Murrumburrah, New South Wales
Family/military connectionsTwo first cousins killed in action. Three brothers served.

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