The AIF Project

Charles Samuel PARKER

Regimental number1414
Place of birthBirchup, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
AddressNaval College, Jervis Bay, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation24
Next of kinFather, Samuel Parker, Naval College, Jervis Bay, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date13 November 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name3rd Battalion, 2nd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/20/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A48 Seang Bee on 11 February 1915
Regimental number from Nominal Roll2414
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll3rd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 3 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records27
Place of burialNo known grave
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
37
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Samuel and Agnes PARKER, Bomaderry, New South Wales
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Wounded in action, Gallipoli, 30 April 1915 (gun shot wound, left forearm); admitted to No. 2 General Hospital, Cairo, 30 April 1915; rejoined unit at Gallipoli, 26 August 1915.

Wounded in action, Gallipoli, 10 December 1915 (shell splinter, right eye); admitted to No. 1 Auxiliary Hospital, Heliopolis, 14 December 1915; rejoined unit, Tel el Kebir, 21 January 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 22 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 28 March 1916.

Wounded in action, France, 22 July 1916 (shell wound, right hand); rejoined unit, 26 August 1916.

Killed in action, Belgium, 3 October 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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