Regimental number | 6281 |
Place of birth | Sydney New South Wales |
School | Convent (Catholic) School, Double Bay, New South Wales |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Occupation | Labourer |
Address | Neutral Bay, New South Wales |
Marital status | Married |
Age at embarkation | 28 |
Next of kin | Wife, Mrs M M Burkett, 18 Young Street, Neutral Bay, Sydney, New South Wales |
Previous military service | Served in the Irish Rifles, Citizen Military Forces. |
Enlistment date | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 17th Battalion, 18th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/34/4 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A29 Suevic on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 17th Battalion |
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular | Name given on RoH circular as William Joseph BURKETT. |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Polygon wood, Ypres, Belgium |
Age at death | 26 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 26 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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 | 82 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: William and Elizabeth BURKETT; husband of Mrs M. BURKETT, 23 Bank Street, North Sydney, New South Wales. Native of Double Bay, Sydney |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |