The AIF Project

Norman Isaac COOTE

Regimental number4036
Place of birthPattersonia, Tasmania
SchoolState School, Tasmania
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationSleeper hewer
AddressChristie Street, Collie, Western Australia
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation28
Height5' 6.5"
Weight150 lbs
Next of kinWife, Mrs Annie Maud Coote, Scottsdale, Tasmania
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date12 May 1916
Place of enlistmentBelmont, Western Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name32nd Battalion, 10th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/49/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A16 Port Melbourne on 28 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll32nd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Age at death28.4
Age at death from cemetery records29
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
120
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Arthur and Eliza COOTE; husband of Annie COOTE, Christie Street, Collie, Western Australia. Native of Tasmania
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Fremantle, 30 October 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 28 December 1916. Proceeded overseas to France, 20 March 1917; taken on strength, 32nd Bn, 25 March1917.

Killed in action, 12 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, COOTE Norman Isaac

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