The AIF Project

Thomas Leonard BYRNE

Regimental number3262
Place of birthSeymour, Victoria
Other NamesThomas Leo
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationDriver
Address10 Arthur Street, South Yarra, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation32
Next of kinFather, T F Byrne, 48 Garden Street, South Yarra, Victoria
Enlistment date8 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name8th Battalion, 11th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/25/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A71 Nestor on 11 October 1915
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll8th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted 8 July 1915 - 8th Bn, 11th Reinforcements. Taken on strength, 8th Bn, 7 January 1916. Promoted Temporary Corporal, 20 August 1917.
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of death or woundingMenin Road, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death24.6
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
52
Family/military connectionsBrother: 3531 Pte James BYRNE, 3rd Motor Transport Section, returned to Australia, 11 May 1919.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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