The AIF Project

Daniel McGuinness Wilson BAILEY

Regimental number6332
Date of birth6 December 1892
Place of birthBrisbane
SchoolState School, Queensland
Other trainingTechnical College
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationClerk
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Height5' 5.25"
Weight130 lbs
Next of kinMrs Stella Bailey, Sauchie Hall, Grey Street, South Brisbane, Queensland
Previous military serviceServed for 2 years in the Cadets; 3 years in the Queensland Rifles, Citizen Military Forces.
Enlistment date13 September 1915
Place of enlistmentBrisbane, Queensland
Unit name9th Battalion, 20th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/26/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A46 Clan Mcgillivray on 7 September 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll9th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 3 November 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records24
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.

Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, BAILEY Daniel McGuinness Wilson

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