George MUIR

Regimental number5578
Place of birthNewcumnock, Scotland
SchoolPublic School, Scotland
Age on arrival in Australia16
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationStoreman
AddressAberdare, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation42
Next of kinBrother, W Muir, Rawson Street, Aberdare, New South Wales
Enlistment date24 May 1916
Place of enlistmentCessnock, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentSapper
Unit nameTunnelling Companies, October 1916, Reinforcements
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A38 Ulysses on 25 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollSapper
Unit from Nominal Roll1st Tunnelling Company
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular'He was rejected the first time he tried to enlist, but got through the second time.' (details from brother)
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of death or woundingFrance
Age at death42.9
Age at death from cemetery records42
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
27
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated in Minmi General Cemetery, New South Wales. Parents: George and Janet Murdoch MUIR. Native of New Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotland
Family/military connectionsNephew: 3844 Pte George Ormsby MUIR, 13th Bn, died of wounds, 11 October 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal