The AIF Project

Claude Herbert PARRY

Regimental number2500
Place of birthWilliamstown, Victoria
SchoolSouth Richmond State School, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
Address74 Regent Street, North Richmond, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Next of kinMother, Mrs Ellen Parry, 74 Regent Street, North Richmond, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed in the Compulsory Training Scheme.
Enlistment date12 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name22nd Battalion, 5th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/39/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board RMS Osterley on 29 September 1915
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll22nd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death20.8
Age at death from cemetery records20
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
97
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John and Ellen PARRY, 61 Hoddle Street, North Richmond, Victoria. Native of Williamstown, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrother: 1100 Sergeant John Ernest PARRY, 14th Field Artillery Brigade, returned to Australia, 15 February 1918; Nephew: 3864 Battalion Sergeant Major Walter Albert MORRIS, 13th Field Artillery Brigade, killed in action, 9 August 1918.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Taken on strength, 22nd Bn, Tel el Kebir, Egypt, 8 January 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 19 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 26 March 1916.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 24 May 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 4 October 1917.

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

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