The AIF Project

Robert Joseph McFADDEN

Regimental number3198
Place of birthSingleton New South Wales
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationCommercial traveller
AddressMosman, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation29
Next of kinMother, Mrs Maud McFadden, 55 Dalton Road, Mosman, New South Wales
Enlistment date15 November 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name45th Battalion, 8th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/62/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A72 Beltana on 25 November 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll45th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 9 June 1917
Age at death from cemetery records29
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
140
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Robert Joseph and Maude McFADDEN, 55 Dalton Road, Mosman, New South Wales. Native of Singleton, New South Wales
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 1881 Pte Clealand George McFADDEN MM, 42nd Bn, returned to Australia, 3 January 1919; 2658 Pte Ronald Arthur McFADDEN, 13th Bn, returned to Australia, 28 March 1919; 9658 Corporal Walter Alexander McFADDEN, 10th Bn, returned to Australia, 16 July 1917; Brother-in-law: [3345] Lt Alfred William HENLEY, 13th Bn, died of wounds, 4 April 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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