The AIF Project

Rudolph Norman Clive KIRSCH

Regimental number737
Date of birth17 August 1893
Place of birthHawthorn Victoria
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationClerk
Address48 Auburn Grove, Auburn, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinMother, 48 Auburn Road, Auburn, Victoria
Enlistment date17 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentColour SGT
Unit name8th Battalion, G Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/25/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board Transport A24 Benalla on 19 October 1914
Regimental number from Nominal RollCommissioned
Rank from Nominal RollCaptain
Unit from Nominal Roll8th Battalion
Promotions

Lieutenant


Unit: 8th Battalion
Promotion date: 28 April 1915

Captain


Unit: 8th Battalion
Promotion date: 12 March 1916

FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records23
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
58
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Simon and Julie KIRSCH, 48 Auburn Grove, Auburn, Victoria. Native of Hawthorn, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrother: 2347 Pte Vivian Roy KIRSCH, 38th Bn, killed in action, 4 October 1917.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

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

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