The AIF Project

Alexander STEELE

Regimental number41
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationSoldier
AddressBertha Street, Mount Gambier, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation26
Next of kinMother, Mrs Eliz Steele, Bertha Street, Mount Gambier, South Australia
Enlistment date25 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentSQSM
Unit name9th Battalion, Machine Gun Section
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board A5, S.S. Omrah on 24 September 1914
Regimental number from Nominal RollCommissioned
Rank from Nominal RollMajor
Unit from Nominal Roll11th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Mention in Despatches


Awarded, and gazetted, 'London Gazette', second Supplement, No. 29251 (5 August 1915); 'Commonwealth Gazette', No. 133 (28 October 1915).

Mention in Despatches


Awarded, and promulgated, 'London Gazette', second Supplement, No. 29890 (2 January 1917); 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 103 (29 June 1917).

FateKilled in Action 9 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records29
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
64
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Dugald and Elizabeth Burton STEELE, 'Muirhome', Mount Gambier, South Australia
Medals

Distinguished Conduct Medal

'From 25th to 29th April, 1915, during operations near Gaba Tepe, for distinguished conduct in manning and maintaining his machine gun which he continued to work after the remainder of his section had been killed or wounded.'
Source: 'London Gazette' No. 6545
Date: 3 July 1915

Distinguished Service Order


Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 103
Date: 29 June 1917

Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Medals: Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Conduct Medal, 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

Print format    


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