The AIF Project

Roger Wodeland STRANGE

Regimental number2479
Place of birthBridgewater, England
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer and engineer
AddressMilton, Gravesend, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Height5' 4.5"
Weight112 lbs
Next of kinFather, Rev. William Robert Pearson Strange, Bendarrock, West Hill, Ottery St Mary, Devon, England
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date22 February 1916
Place of enlistmentSydney, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name53rd Battalion, 5th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/70/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A47 Mashobra on 14 September 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll14th Machine Gun Company
FateKilled in Action 27 September 1917
Miscellaneous details (Nominal Roll)Fate incorrectly recorded on Nominal Roll as Returned to Australia.
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
179
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 14 September 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 2 November 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 14 December 1916; taken on strength, 53rd Bn, in the field, 24 December 1916.

Admitted to 15th Australian Field Ambulance, 17 February 1917 (deafness), and transferred same day to 5th Division Rest Station; discharged to duty, 1 March 1917; rejoined Bn, in the field, 2 March 1917.

Admitted to 61st Field Ambulance, 23 May 1917 (scabies); transferred to 1st Anzac Corps Scabies Station, 24 May 1917; discharged to duty, 30 May 1917; rejoined Bn, in the field, 3 June 1917.

Detached for duty at 14th Australian Machine Gun Company, 9 July 1917.

Admitted to 14th Australian Field Ambulance, 9 September 1917 (neurasthenia); discharged to duty, 12 September 1917; rejoined unit, in the field, 14 September 1917.

Killed in action, 27 September 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
Miscellaneous detailsSecond given name incorrectly recorded on Embarkation Roll as Modeland.
SourcesNAA: B2455, STRANGE Roger Wodeland

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