William MARGERRISON

Regimental number84
Place of birthSheffield, Yorkshire, England
SchoolCrooksman Board School, Sheffield, England
Age on arrival in Australia16
ReligionMethodist
OccupationStockman
AddressBrisbane, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinMother, Mrs Hannah Margerrison, Templemore Street, Wooloowin, Queensland
Enlistment date19 November 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name14th Light Horse Regiment, A Squadron
AWM Embarkation Roll number10/19/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A72 Beltana on 13 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll9th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Military Medal


'Courage & devotion to duty in maintaining communication under heavy fire.'
Recommendation date: 10 March 1917

Other details from Roll of Honour CircularSignaller Margerrison was awarded the Military Medal for Conspicous Bravery in the Field at Le Barque on 16/3/17 and was wounded in April 1917.
FateKilled in Action 1 October 1917
Place of death or woundingGallipoli, Turkey
Age at death23
Age at death from cemetery records23
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
55
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: James and Hannah MAGERRISON, "Templemore", Old Sandgate road, Wooloowin, Brisbane, Queensland. Native of Sheffield, England