Regimental number | 5977 |
Place of birth | Gladstone, Queensland |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Occupation | Labourer |
Address | Proserpine, Queensland |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 20 |
Height | 5' 5" |
Weight | 130 lbs |
Next of kin | Mother, Mrs F. Aitcheson, Proserpine, Queensland |
Previous military service | Nil |
Enlistment date | |
Place of enlistment | Townsville, Queensland |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 9th Battalion, 19th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/26/4 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A50 Itonus on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 9th Battalion |
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular | Enlisted 14 February 1916. Taken on strength, 9th Battalion, 18 April 1917. |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Third Battle of Ypres, Belgium |
Date of death | |
Age at death | 21 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The 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 | 54 |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Embarked Brisbane, 8 August 1916. Found guilty, 24 August 1916, of disobeying orders by leaving the ship without permission in Fremantle: awarded 8 days detention. Disembarked, Britain, 18 October 1916. Marched in, 3rd Training Bn, from Fovant Camp, 10 December 1916. Admitted to hospital (sick), England, 23 December 1916; rejoined 3rd Training Bn from hospital, 10 January 1917. Embarked to join the British Expeditionary Force, France, 10 April 1917; marched in, 1st Australian Divisional Base, Etaples, 11 April 1917. Taken on strength, 9th Bn, France, 18 April 1917. Killed in action, Belgium, 8 October 1917. Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |
Sources | NAA: B2455, AITCHESON William Gladstone |