Thomas PEACH

Regimental number400
Place of birthEdenhope, Victoria
SchoolEdenhope State School, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation35
Next of kinFather, Tom Peach, Edenhope, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date12 December 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name13th Light Horse Regiment, 10th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number10/18/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A32 Themistocles on 28 July 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll1st Light Horse Regiment
FateKilled in Action 19 September 1917
Place of death or woundingWesthoek Ridge, near Ypres, Belgium
Age at death26
Age at death from cemetery records26
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
9
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Tom and Mary PEACH, Edenhope, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 5194 Pte John PEACH, 46th Bn, killed in action, 3 April 1918; 883 Pte Joseph PEACH, Australian Army Medical Corps, returned to Australia, 27 September 1917.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Proceeded to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 4 September 1915.

Admitted to 5th Field Ambulance, 13 November 1915 (enteric); embarked on Hospital Ship 'Galeka', 16 November 1915; disembarked Malta, 24 November 1915, and admitted to Cottonera Hospital (dangerously ill); removed from 'serious' list, 10 December 1915. Embarked from Malta 16 January 1916; disembarked Alexandria, 21 January 1916, and admitted to 1st Australian General Hospital, Heliopolis (para-typhoid).

Commenced return to Australia from Suez on board HT 'Nestor', 9 February 1916.

Re-embarked Melbourne on board HT 'Themistocles', 28 July 1916 (1st Anzac Army Corps Light Horse Regiment); disembarked Plymouth, England, 11 September 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 31 December 1916; taken on strength, 1st Anzac Army Corps Light Horse Regiment, 11 January 1917.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 6 June 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 19 September 1917.

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