The AIF Project

Frederick Fincastle CAMPBELL

Regimental number3566
Date of birth--/06/1887
Place of birthBognor, Sussex, England
SchoolBedford, England
Age on arrival in Australia17
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationOrchardist
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation28
Next of kinFather, L G Campbell, Rock near Wadebridge, Cornwall, England
Enlistment date30 June 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name15th Battalion, 11th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/32/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A38 Ulysses on 27 October 1915
Regimental number from Nominal RollCommissioned
Rank from Nominal RollLieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll47th Battalion
Promotions

2nd Lieutenant


Unit: 47th Battalion
Promotion date: 12 March 1916

FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death29.7
Age at death from cemetery records29
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
143
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Leveron aand Mary Campbell, Fairfield, Monkton, Ayrshire, Scotland
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Taken on strength, 47th Bn, Tel el Kebir, 9 March 1916. Promoted Temporary Sergeant, 10 March 1916. Appointed 2nd Lt, 12 March 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 6 June 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 16 June 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 22 January 1917; rejoined 47th Bn, 25 January 1917.

Promoted Lt, 9 February 1917.

Admitted to 8th Australian Field Ambulance, 18 March 1917 (abcess, feet); rejoined unit, 29 March 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 7 June 1917.

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

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