John WOODS

Regimental number2180
Place of birthAdamstown, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationMiner
AddressFleming Street, Smedmore, Newcastle, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation27.6
Height5' 5"
Weight150 lbs
Next of kinWife, Mrs Elfreda Woods, Fleming Street, Smedmore, Newcastle, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date7 April 1916
Place of enlistmentNewcastle, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name34th Battalion, 3rd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/51/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A68 Anchises on 24 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollDriver
Unit from Nominal Roll34th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 13 October 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, 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
124
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Ausgustus Steward Alexandria and Mary WOODS; Wife: Elfreda Ethel WOODS, of 15 Fleming Street, Islington, New South Wales
Family/military connectionsCousin: 432 Sergeant Frederick Gallagher GALLEGHAN, 34th Bn, returned to Australia, 9 December 1918; Uncle: 2069 Pte Robert Galleghan, 34th Bn, killed in action, 29 September 1918.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
Miscellaneous detailsNext of kin's given name incorrectly entered on Embarkation Roll as Alfreda.
SourcesNAA: B2455, WOODS John