The AIF Project

William Edwin Ernest PERRY

Regimental number2616
Place of birthOrbost Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationSchool teacher
AddressOrbost, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinFather, George Daniel Perry, Orbost, Victoria
Enlistment date27 April 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll16 May 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name59th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/76/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A71 Nestor on 2 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll59th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 16 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records24
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), 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
168
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: George and Rhoda PERRY, Orbost, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrother: 1631 Pte Norval Roy PERRY, Australian Flying Corps, effective abroad (still overseas)
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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