Alfred Norman BISHOP

Regimental number235
Place of birthAdelaide, South Australia
SchoolPt Pirie Public School, South Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationGardener
AddressBasket Range, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Next of kinMother, Mrs Eva Dunstan Bishop, same address
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date7 January 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name43rd Battalion, B Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/60/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A19 Afric on 9 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll43rd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingHill 40, Zonnebeke, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death27
Age at death from cemetery records26
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
136
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Arthur Wells and Eva Dunston BISHOP, Waikerie, South Australia. Native of Basket Range.
Medals

Military Medal


Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 9
Date: 24 January 1918

Family/military connectionsBrothers: 1177 Gunner Walter Lewis BISHOP, 3rd Field Artillery Brigade, died of wounds, Messines Ridge, Belgium, 23 September 1917; 249 Pte Lloyd Allan BISHOP, 32nd Bn, returned to Australia.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: Military Medal, British War Medal, Victory Medal