The AIF Project

John Alfred CAWTHEN

Regimental number39
Place of birthPerth, Tasmania
ReligionBaptist
OccupationPostal assistant
AddressPerth, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinFather, Flinders Cawthen, Perth, Tasmania
Previous military service92nd Infantry
Enlistment date2 December 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name40th Battalion, Headquarters
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/57/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Hobart, Tasmania, on board HMAT A35 Berrima on 1 July 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll40th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted 2 December 1915; taken on strength, 40th Bn, 1 May 1916.
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death21
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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
132
Family/military connectionsBrother: 2450 Sapper Flinders James CAWTHEN, 4th Troop Engineers, returned to Australia, 26 September 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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