The AIF Project

William Henry COMPER

Regimental number57
Place of birthGower Street, St Pancras, London, England
Place of birthSt. Pancras, London, England
SchoolWesleyan MC School, Lady Margaret Road, Kentish Town, London, England
Other trainingTeacher
Age on arrival in Australia19
ReligionMethodist
OccupationSchool teacher
AddressLimpinwood, Murwillumbah, Tweed Heads, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation26
Next of kinSister, Mrs Alice Hall, Havelock North, Hawkes Bay, North Island, NZ
Enlistment date3 November 1915
Rank on enlistmentSergeant
Unit name42nd Battalion, A Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/59/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A30 Borda on 5 June 1916
Regimental number from Nominal RollCommissioned
Rank from Nominal Roll2nd Lieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll42nd Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted 3 November 1915; taken on strength, 42nd Bn, 15 May 1916; wounded, 11 February 1917; 2nd Lt, 26 June 1917.
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death28
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel ), 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
135
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William Dosseter and Emma COMPER. Native of St. Pancras, London, England
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Print format    


© The AIF Project 2024, UNSW Canberra. Not to be reproduced without permission.