The AIF Project

Alden Bernard BRAMICH

Regimental number3177
Place of birthNewtown, Tasmania
SchoolState School, Tasmania
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
AddressFlowerdale Junction, Tasmania
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation24
Next of kinWife, Mrs M Bramich, Flowerdale Junction, Tasmania
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date4 August 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name15th Battalion, 10th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/32/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A17 Port Lincoln on 16 October 1915
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll47th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death25
Age at death from cemetery records26
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
143
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Bernard and Alice BRAMICH, Flowerdale, Tasmania. Native of Myalla, Tasmania
Family/military connectionsBrother: 2722 Lance Corporal Tyson Kenneth BRAMICH, 47th Bn, killed in action, Wytschaete, Belgium, 19 August 1917.
Other details

War service: admitted to No. 3 Auxiliary Hospital, Heliopolis, 18 January 1916 (gastritis); discharged to duty, 3 February 1916. Transferred to 47th Bn, Tel el Kebir, 5 February 1916. Admitted to 12th Australian Field Ambulance, 19 March 1916 (influenza); transferred to 2nd Australian Stationary Hospital, 26 March 1916; discharged to unit, 29 March 1916. Admitted to 12th Field Ambulance, 19 May 1916 (gastritis); rejoined unit, 24 May 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 2 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 9 June 1916. Appointed Lance Corporal, 8 January 1917; Corporal, 21 March 1917.

Reported as missing in action, 13 October 1917; Court of Inquiry held in the field, 11 March 1918, declared him 'killed in action, 12 October 1917'.

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

Print format    


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