The AIF Project

Sydney Stanna BOND

Place of birthBrisbane Queensland
SchoolToowoomba and Brisbane Grammar Schools, Queensland
Other trainingUniversity of Queensland
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationStudent
AddressBrisbane, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinFather, Lewis Martin Bond, Perry Bros, Brisbane, Queensland
Enlistment date26 March 1916
Rank on enlistmentLieutenant
Unit name25th Battalion, 13th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/42/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A49 Seang Choon on 4 May 1916
FateKilled in Action 9 October 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death24
Age at death from cemetery records24
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
163
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated on University of Queensland Roll of Honour ('Pro Patria Ceciderunt'; They fell for their Country), St Lucia, Queensland. Father: Lewis Martin BOND. Native of Brisbane, Queensland
Family/military connectionsUncle: Commander Thomas Arthur BOND DSO, Royal Australian Naval Bridging Team, effective abroad (still overseas)
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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