George WELLS

Regimental number3465
Place of birthQuorn, South Australia
SchoolPublic School, Willochra via Quorn, South Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFireman
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation27
Height5' 7"
Weight138 lbs
Next of kinMother, Louisa Wells, Quorn, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date21 November 1916
Place of enlistmentAdelaide, South Australia
Unit name48th Battalion, 9th Reinforcement
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT Seang Bee on 10 February 1917
Regimental number from Nominal Roll21/11/1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll48th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Miscellaneous details (Nominal Roll)Service Number incorrectly entered on RecordSearch as 3405.
Age at death from cemetery records28
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

Embabarked Adelaide, 10 February 1917; disembarked Devonport, England, 2 May 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 16 July 1917; taken on strength, 48th Bn, in the field, 3 August 1917.

Killed in action, 12 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, WELLS George