The AIF Project

Thomas Edward COOPER

Regimental number6010
Place of birthSydney, New South Wales
SchoolSuperior Public School, West Maitland, New South Wales
ReligionCongregational
OccupationHorse trainer
AddressPerth, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation38
Next of kinMother, Mrs Mary Jane Cooper, 286 Military Road, Neutral Bay, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date6 March 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name16th Battalion, 19th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/33/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A28 Miltiades on 7 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll16th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 27 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele or Polygon Wood, Belgium
Age at death42
Age at death from cemetery records40
Place of burialNo known grave
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
79
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Edward and Jane COOPER (nee Husband), 286 Military Road, Neutral Bay, New South Wales. Native of Sydney
Family/military connectionsCousin: 4505 Pte Norman George HUSBAND MSM, 4th Division Headquarters, returned to Australia, 12 May 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Fremantle, 9 August 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 25 September 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 10 April 1917; taken on strength, 16th Bn, 30 April 1917.

Wounded in action, remaining at duty, 7 August 1917.

Killed in action, 27 September 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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