The AIF Project

Willie IRVING

Regimental number1001
Place of birthLucknow, New South Wales
SchoolKanowna State School, Western Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationGrocer
Address55 Mercer Street, Kanowna, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinFather, A Irving, 55 Mercer Street, Kanowna, Western Australia
Enlistment date17 August 1914
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll18 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name11th Battalion, Headquarters
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/28/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board Transport A11 Ascanius on 2 November 1914
Regimental number from Nominal RollCommissioned
Rank from Nominal Roll2nd Lieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll11th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 2 November 1917
Place of death or woundingYpres, Belgium
Age at death24.9
Age at death from cemetery records24
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
62
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Arthur and Gertrude IRVING, 55 Mercers Street, Kanowna, Western Australia
Family/military connectionsCousin: D G SMITH, killed at Gallipoli, Turkey

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