The AIF Project

Louis Bennett CHAPMAN

Regimental number199
Place of birthUlverstone, Tasmania
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationBlacksmith
Address31 Locke Street, Essendon, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinJ S Chapman, 31 Locke Street, Essendon, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date10 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentCorporal
Unit name29th Battalion, A Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/46/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A11 Ascanius on 10 November 1915
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll29th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 26-27 September 1917
Age at death from cemetery records24
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
115
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John and Mary CHAPMAN, 36 Locke Street, Essendon, Victoria. Native of Ulverstone, Tasmania
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Disembarked Suez, 7 December 1915.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 16 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 23 June 1916.

Promoted Temporary Sergeant, 23 July 1916; Sergeant, 16 August 1916.

Wounded in action, 7 September 1916 (gun shot wounds, multiple, right thigh); transferred to 30th General Hospital, 9 September 1916; to England, 11 September 1916, and admitted to Northumberland War Hospital, Gosforth, 12 September 1916 (gun shot wounds, back, right buttock and thigh: slight). transferred to No. 1 Auxiliary Hospital, Harefield, 9 November 1916; discharged to No. 2 Command Depot, Weymouth, 21 November 1916. Marched into No. 4 Camp, Infantry Draft Depot, Perham Downs, 28 December 1916. Proceeded overseas to France, 20 August 1917; rejoined 29th Bn, 1 September 1917.

Killed in action, 26-27 September 1917.

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

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