The AIF Project

Percival Carl MINIFIE

Regimental number27
Date of birth23 August 1887
Place of birthMasterton, New Zealand
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationRailwayman
AddressWatchem, Mallee, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation26
Next of kinBrother, Fred Minifie, Watchem, Mallee, Victoria
Enlistment date18 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name8th Battalion, Headquarters
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/25/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board Transport A24 Benalla on 19 October 1914
Regimental number from Nominal RollCommissioned
Rank from Nominal RollLieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll1st Machine Gun Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Military Cross


'Consistent good work since November 1916 to 10 May 1917. Cool leadership and bravery in rendering many valuable services.'
Recommendation date: "Unspecified"

FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingWesthoek Ridge, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records29
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
11
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Son of Mary STIRLING (formerly MINIFIE) and the late Henry MINIFIE
Place of burialWesthoek Ridge (Name appears on the Menin Gate Memorial, Belgium)

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