Thomas Henry MARKHAM

Regimental number4194
Place of birthLiverpool, New South Wales
SchoolSuperior Public School, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
AddressJunee, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation28
Next of kinFather, A Markham, Regent Street, Junee, New South Wales
Enlistment date1 October 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name20th Battalion, 10th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/37/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A67 Orsova on 11 March 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll20th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Military Medal


'Did excellent work with Lewis Gun on 15th April in driving out the enemy from village of Lagnicourt and was instrumental in the recapture of 3rd Battery A.F. Artillery.'
Recommendation date: 25 April 1917

FateKilled in Action 8 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death30
Age at death from cemetery records30
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
91
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Alfred adn Emily MARKHAM, 41 Baltic Street, Newtown, Sydney. Native of Junee, New South Wales
Medals

Military Medal

'Did excellent work on morning of 15th April in driving out the enemy from village of LAGNICOURT and was instrumental in the recapture of 3rd Battery A.F. Artillery. His handling of his Lewis gun and team was most satisfactory.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 169
Date: 4 October 1917

Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: Military Medal, British War Medal, Victory Medal