William Winfred MARTIN

Regimental number2150
Place of birthMoama, New South Wales
SchoolPublic School and Grammar School, New South Wales
ReligionMethodist
OccupationLabourer
AddressMoama, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinElizabeth Martin, Moama, New South Wales
Enlistment date2 March 1915
Place of enlistmentEchuca, Victoria
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name8th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/25/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A62 Wandilla on 17 June 1915
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll57th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularHe had been previously wounded; after his discharge from the Hospital he was alloted six months light employment in England, but in six weeks he wrote 'I am now fit and I am going to join my Battalion'. He was killed in the first battle. (details from father)
FateKilled in Action 26 September 1917
Place of death or woundingBelgium
Age at death24
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), 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
164
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated in Moama Cemetery, New South Wales. Parents: Isaac and Elizabeth MARTIN, Moama, New South Wales
Other details

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