The AIF Project

Martin Walter CHARLESWORTH

Regimental number6224
Place of birthStepney, South Australia
SchoolState School, South Australia
ReligionMethodist
OccupationCarpenter
AddressNorth Adelaide, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinMother, Mrs R B Charlesworth, 240 Gower Street, North Adelaide, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date22 May 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name10th Battalion, 20th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/27/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A68 Anchises on 28 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll10th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 21 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death22
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
58
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John and Rosanna CHARLESWORTH, Moresby Street, Wayville, South Australia. Native of Adelaide, South Australia
Family/military connectionsBrother: 2893 Pte Robert William Nairne CHARLESWORTH, 50th Bn, returned to Australia, 19 October 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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