Wesley BUTTSWORTH

Regimental number6681
Place of birthGhinni Ghinni, Manning River, New South Wales
SchoolGhinni Ghinni State School, Manning River, New South Wales
ReligionMethodist
OccupationFarmer
AddressGhinni Ghinni, Manning River, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation31
Next of kinWife, Mrs A Buttsworth, Coolabunia, Kingaroy, Queensland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date11 October 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll6 October 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name17th Battalion, 19th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/34/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A18 Wiltshire on 7 February 1917
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll17th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 9 October 1917
Place of death or woundingAnzac Ridge
Age at death32
Age at death from cemetery records32
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe 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: Henry and Phylis BUTTSWORTH; husband of Alice BUTTSWORTH, Coolabunia, Queensland
Family/military connectionsBrother: 1332 Warrant Officer Cecil Jones BUTTSWORTH MSM, returned to Australia, 8 November 1918; Cousins: 2281A Pte Clive BREWER, 53rd Bn, killed in action, 26 September 1917; 3765 Pte John Edmund BUTTSWORTH, 30th Bn, killed in action, Villers-Bretonneux, France, 8 April 1918.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal