The AIF Project

Stephen Prosser BRETT

Regimental number4098
Place of birthRoma, Queensland
SchoolState School, Toowong, Queensland
ReligionMethodist
OccupationLabourer
AddressThulimbah via Stanthorp, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Next of kinMother, Mrs Selina Brett, Thulimbah via Stanthorp, Queensland
Enlistment date22 September 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name26th Battalion, 10th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/43/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A73 Commonwealth on 28 March 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll26th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular'Always a good son, the support & comfort of his widowed Mother. A good soldier of Jesus Christ, &, I trust - also a good soldier of the King.' (details from his mother)
FateKilled in Action 9 October 1917
Place of death or woundingYpres, Belgium
Age at death26.3
Age at death from cemetery records26
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
107
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William Thomas and Selina BRETT, Thulimbah, Queensland.
Family/military connectionsCousin (1st): 200 Sergeant William George TRIX, 26th Bn, killed in action, 29 July 1916.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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