The AIF Project

Harold William BODYCOAT

Regimental number783
Place of birthWoodstock, Victoria
SchoolState School, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationClerk
Address5 Bennett Street, East Perth, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Next of kinFather, Walter Bodycoat, Waroona PO, Waroona, Western Australia
Previous military serviceServed in the Senior Cadets, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.
Enlistment date18 January 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll3 February 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name44th Battalion, D Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/61/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A29 Suevic on 6 June 1916
Regimental number from Nominal Roll783A
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll31st Battalion
FateKilled in Action 22 October 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death21
Age at death from cemetery records21
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
118
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Walter and Mary BODYCOAT, 127 Joel Terrace, Mount Lawley, Western Australia. Native of Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrother: 14984 Pte Walter BODYCOAT MM, 15th Field Company Engineers, discharged, 3 March 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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