The AIF Project

Roy BROWN

Regimental number1618
Place of birthStanthorpe, Queensland
True NameMUIR, Bruce
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationLabourer
AddressCharleville, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation38
Height5' 7"
Weight144 lbs
Next of kinSister, Mrs Kingsley, Glen Innes PO, Glen Innes, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date10 February 1916
Place of enlistmentCootamundra, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name56th Battalion, 2nd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/73/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A40 Ceramic on 14 April 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll56th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 20 October 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), 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
162
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John and Johanna MUIR. Native of Bonshaw, New South Wales
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Embarked Alexandria, 29 July 1916; disembarked Southampton, England, via Marseilles, France, 9 August 1916.

Admitted to Military Hospital, Fargo, 11 August 1916 (influenza).

Found guilty, 31 October 1916, of being absent from Tattoo till 11.10 pm, 25 October 1916: awarded 14 days' Confined to Barracks.

Proceeded overseas to France, 21 December 1916; taken on strength, 56th Bn, in the field, 8 February 1917.

Killed in action, 20 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, BROWN Roy

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