Adam MILLER

Regimental number1864
Place of birthEyemouth, Berwickshire, Scotland
SchoolEyemouth Public School, Berwickshire, Scotland
Other trainingProfessional footballer
Age on arrival in Australia28
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationLabourer
Addressc/o J Bell, 101 Brown Street, New Farm, Brisbane, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation31
Next of kinFather, A Miller, Coldingham, Scotland
Previous military serviceServed in the 1st Berwickshire Artillery (Volunteers).
Enlistment date17 December 1914
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll8 January 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name9th Battalion, 4th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/26/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A15 Star Of England on 8 April 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll9th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Military Medal


'Gallant conduct and devotion to duty under fire as stretcher-bearer.' (Bullecourt 6-7 May 1917).
Recommendation date: 15 May 1917

Other details from Roll of Honour CircularTold his father he had been recommended for a decoration for carrying an important message from HQ to the firing line through a 'terrific shell fire. The officers were amazed he won through; we never heard why he did'nt get the decoration'. (details from father)
FateKilled in Action 21 December 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death34
Age at death from cemetery records34
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
56
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Adam and Isabella MILLER, Paradise, Coldingham, Berwickshire, Scotland. Native of Eyemouth, Berwickshire