John Thomas Hamilton ARAM

Date of birth9 April 1886
Place of birthSt Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria
SchoolAll Saints Brighton Road State School, Victoria
OccupationClerk Victorian State Service
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation29
Height5' 7"
Weight154 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs S.A. Ostberg, Glenfern, Hotham Street, East St Kilda, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed for 8 years in the 52nd Infantry, Victorian Scottish Regiment, Citizen Military Forces.
Rank on enlistmentLieutenant
Unit nameDivisional Signal Company 3, Section 2
AWM Embarkation Roll number22/13/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A39 Port Macquarie on 4 June 1915
Rank from Nominal RollCaptain
Unit from Nominal Roll57th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 25 September 1917
Age at death from cemetery records30
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
163
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Sarah Ann OSTBERG (formerly ARAM), and the late William ARAM
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Embarked Melbourne, 4 June 1915; disembarked Suez, 12 July 1915.

Embarked Alexandria on 'Southland', 30 August 1915; ship torpedoed, 2 September 1915.

Disembarked Alexandria, 7 January 1916.

Admitted to 7th Field Ambulance, Ismailia, 12 February 1916 (hydrocetsa).

Taken on strength, 57th Bn, Tel el Kebir, 17 March 1916.

Admitted to 15th Field Ambulance, Ferry Post, 4 April 1916 (dyspepsia); discharged to duty, 5 April 1916.

Promoted Captain, 14 April 1916.

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 17 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 24 June 1916.

Seconded for duty with 15th Training Bn, England, 18 December 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 2 July 1917; rejoined 57th Bn, in the field, 20 July 1917.

Killed in action, 25 September 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, ARAM John Thomas Hamilton