The AIF Project

Ishmael BRAITHWAITE

Regimental number7l95
Place of birthNowra, New South Wales
SchoolSuperior Public School, Nowra, New South Wales
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationPainter
AddressMoss Street, Nowra, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation27
Next of kinWife, Mrs E A Braithwaite, Moss Street, Nowra, New South Wales
Previous military serviceServed in the Senior Cadets.
Enlistment date24 January 1917
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name1st Battalion, 24th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/18/5
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board RMS Osterley on 10 February 1917
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll35th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records28
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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
125
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated in Nowra Cemetery, New South Wales. Parents: William (d. 9 June 1928, aged 80; bu. Nowra Cemetery) and Marion (d. 24 December 1919, aged 68; bu. Nowra Cemetery) BRAITHWAITE; husband of Edith A. BRAITHWAITE, Moss Street, Nowra, New South Wales. Photo: Peter Dennis
Family/military connectionsBrother: 2039 Pte Alexander Gordon BRAITHWAITE, 35th Bn, returned to Australia, 25 January 1919.
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.