The AIF Project

Walter Harding PACK

Regimental number465
Place of birthAldershot, Hants., England
SchoolCambridge, England
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationPorter
Address'Iola', Charles Street, Milton, Brisbane, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Next of kinFather, Alfred Pack, 'Iola', Charles Street, Milton, Brisbane, Queensland
Previous military serviceServed for 12 months in the 8th Infantry, Citizen Military Forces.
Enlistment date1 July 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 11, Reinforcement 6
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/16/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A67 Orsova on 6 December 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll11th Machine Gun Company
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records19
Place of burialNo known grave
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
179
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Alfred and Frederica PACK, Bayswater Terrace, Hyde Park, Townsville, Queensland. Native of England
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Melbourne, 6 December 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 17 February 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 24 April 1917; taken on strength, 11th Machine Gun Company, 10 May 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 4 October 1917

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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