The AIF Project

William George PENNINGTON

Regimental number650
Place of birthNhill, Victoria
ReligionMethodist
Occupationlronmoulder
Address214 Station Street, Carlton, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinHorace Pennington, 799 Drummond Street, Carlton, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed in the 63rd Infantry, Citizen Military Forces. (Still serving at time of AIF enlistment.)
Enlistment date19 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name6th Battalion, F Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/23/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A20 Hororata on 19 October 1914
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll6th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Age at death from cemetery records23
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
48
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Mrs E. JUDSON (formerly PENNINGTON) and the late William PENNINGTON. Native of Nhill, Victoria
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Embarked Alexandria to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (Gallipoli), 5 April 1915.

Transferred from HS 'Alannia', to Alexandria, 22 May 1915 (rheumatic fever). Discharged from Deaconess Hospital, 25 May 1915; embarked for Gallipoli, 2 June 1915; rejoined unit, 12 June 1915.

Wounded in action, 13 July 1915 (gun shot wound); admitted to 26th Casualty Clearing Station, 14 July 1915; transferred to Convalescent Camp, Mudros, 30 July 1915; rejoined unit, 16 December 1915.

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 26 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 2 April 1916.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 3 May 1916; promoted Corporal, 30 July 1916.

Reverted to ranks at own request, 28 November 1916; appointed Lance Corporal, 15 February 1917; Corporal, 1 June 1917.

Admitted to 2nd Australian Field Ambulance, 18 July 1917 (pyrexia, unknown origin); rejoined unit, 24 July 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 20 September 1917.

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

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