The AIF Project

William BOTT

Regimental number6128
Place of birthBorrowash, Derbyshire, England
Other NamesSamuel William Harris
SchoolBoard School, Borrowash, Derbyshire, England
Age on arrival in Australia18
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationMotor engineer
Address87 Cobden Street, Kew, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinMother, Mrs L H Bott, 87 Cobden Street, Kew, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date22 June 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll26 February 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name5th Battalion, 19th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/22/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A32 Themistocles on 28 July 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll5th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of death or woundingMenin Road, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death23
Age at death from cemetery records23
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
43
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Luch BOTT, Victoria Road, Mitcham. Native of Borrowash, Derby, England
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Print format    


© The AIF Project 2024, UNSW Canberra. Not to be reproduced without permission.