The AIF Project

Alfred Boyes POLLARD

Regimental number660
Place of birthWodonga, Victoria
ReligionMethodist
OccupationFarmer
AddressBonegilla Post Office via Wodonga, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Next of kinFather, Joseph Pollard, Bonegilla Post Office via Wodonga, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date4 March 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name37th Battalion, B Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/54/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A34 Persic on 3 June 1916
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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
128
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Melbourne, 3 June 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 25 July 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 22 November 1916.

Detached for duty with 3rd Australian Division Traffic Police, 29 November 1916; rejoined 37th Bn, 26 April 1917.

Wounded in action, 7-9 June 1917 (gun shot wound, face); transferred to England, 13 June 1917; admitted to Lewisham Military Hospital,15 June 1917. Granted furlough, 30 June 1917, to report to Training Depot, Perham Downs, 14 July 1917. Proceeded overseas to France, 25 August 1917; rejoined Bn, 1 September 1917.

Wounded in action, 12 October 1917; subsequently reported wounded and missing in action; posted, 11 February 1918, as killed in action. Buried 250 yards North of Hamburg, approx. 2.5 miles North of Polygon Wood, 1.5 miles South West of Passchendaele, 5 miles North East of Ypres.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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