The AIF Project

Frederick Benedict ALSOP

Regimental number411
Place of birthWinchelsea, Victoria
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationSteward
AddressWinchelsea, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Height5' 7"
Weight151 lbs
Next of kinFather, G B Alsop, Winchelsea, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date11 August 1916
Place of enlistmentMelbourne, Victoria
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 2, Reinforcement 6
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/7/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A17 Port Lincoln on 20 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll17th Machine Gun Company
FateKilled in Action 17 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records20
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
177
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: George and Ann ALSOP, Winchelsea, Victoria
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Melbourne, 20 October 1916; transferred ship, Sierra Leone, 5 December 1916; disembarked, Devonport, England, 28 December 1916.

Marched in, Australian Details Camp, Perham Downs, 29 December 1916.

Transferred to 4th Division Machine Gun Company, 13 February 1917.

Appointed lance corporal, 26 April 1917.

Detached to 3rd Training Bn for instruction, Durrington, 20 May 1917; rejoined unit from detachment, 25 May 1917.

Embarked Southampton to join the British Expeditionary Force, France, 7 September 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 17 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, ALSOP Frederick Benedict

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