The AIF Project

Leslie QUINN

Regimental number604
Place of birthSwansea, Tasmania
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
Address21 Enmore Road, Marrickville, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinWife, Mrs M Quinn, c/o J Clay, Victoria Road, Adamstown, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date26 July 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 6, Reinforcement 10
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/11/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board RMS Omrah on 17 January 1917
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll6th Machine Gun Company
FateKilled in Action 19 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records23
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
178
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Charles and Harriet QUINN; husband of Mrs M QUINN, 1 Queen Street, Footscray, Victoria
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Melbourne, 17 January 1917; disembarked Devonport, England, 27 March 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 19 May 1917; taken on strength, 14th Machine Gun Company, 1 June 1917.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 10 October 1917.

Killed in action, 19 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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