John Reid TROTTER

Regimental number1584
Place of birthLeith, Scotland
SchoolBannington Road, Leith, Scotland
Age on arrival in Australia28
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationBricklayer
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation32
Next of kinWife, Mrs J R Trotter c/o Mrs G Muir, 18 Lorne Street, Leith, Scotland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date7 April 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name18th Battalion, 1st Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/35/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A32 Themistocles on 12 May 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll18th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of death or woundingYpres, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records33
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
87
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: George and Elizabeth Reid TROTTER; husband of Margaret TROTTER, 18 Lorne Street, Leith, Scotland. Native of Leith, Scotland
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Embarked from Alexandria to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 1 August 1915. Admitted to 5th Field Ambulance, 7 October 1915; discharged, 15 October 1915. Admitted to 5th Field Ambulance, 6 December 1915; transferred by hospital ship to Egypt, and admitted to No. 1 Auxiliary Hospital, Heliopolis, 14 December 1915. transferred to 1st Australian General Hospital, 4 January 1916 (jaundice); to No. 2 Auxiliary Hospital, 9 February 1916 (enteric fever); to No. 3 Auxiliary Hospital, 1 March 1916; discharged to duty, 15 March 1916.

Embarked from Alexandria, 2 August 1916; disembarked England. Proceeded overseas to France, 19 April 1917; rejoined 18th Bn, 9 May 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 20 September 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal