The AIF Project

Samuel Aloysius TYLER

Regimental number419
Place of birthEugowra, New South Wales
Other NamesTYLER, Samuel Alloisous
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationLabourer
AddressGoondiwindi, Queensland
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation38
Height5' 10"
Weight140 lbs
Next of kinWife, Mrs Emily Tyler, Goondiwindi, Queensland
Previous military serviceNil (previously temporarily rejected for enlistment on account of varicocele)
Enlistment date18 May 1916
Place of enlistmentWarwick, Queensland
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 13, Reinforcement 6
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/18/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A17 Port Lincoln on 20 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll13th Machine Gun Company
FateKilled in Action 27 September 1917
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
Family/military connectionsBrother: 1270 Pte William Bernard TYLER, 5th Light Horse Regiment, killed in action, 10 November 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, TYLER Samuel Aloysius

Print format    


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