The AIF Project

Leonard PARKER

Regimental number2114
Place of birthBoonah, nr Dean's Marsh, Victoria
SchoolBoonah State School, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationCarpenter
AddressPO, Noorat, Victoria
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation26
Height5' 9"
Weight140 lbs
Next of kinWife, Mrs Agnes Parker, PO, Noorat, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date14 July 1915
Place of enlistmentGeelong, Victoria
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name29th Battalion, 3rd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/46/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A70 Ballarat on 18 February 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll29th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 26-27 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records28
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
116
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated in Terang Cemetery, Victoria. Parents: George and Eliza PARKER (nee ALLEN); husband of Agnes PARKER, Noorat, Victoria
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Embarked Melbourne, 18 February 1916; disembarked Suez, 22 March 1916; taken on strength, 29th Bn, Brighton Beach, 1 April 1916.

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 16 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 23 June 1916.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 23 December 1916.

Detached to 5th Division Gas School, 9 July 1917; rejoined Bn, in the field, from detachment, 13 July 1917.

On leave, 30 August 1917; rejoined Bn, in the field, from leave, 11 September 1917.

Killed in action, 26-27 September 1917.

Buried in an isolated grave; grave subsequently lost.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, PARKER Leonard

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