The AIF Project

Ernest Walter CORRIE

Regimental number2236
Place of birthBacchus Marsh Victoria
SchoolBacchus Marsh and Maffra State Schools, Victoria
ReligionMethodist
OccupationMotor driver
AddressScott's Flat via Singleton, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinFather, J Corrie, Scott's Flat via Singleton, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date31 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name17th Battalion, 4th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/34/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A8 Argyllshire on 30 September 1915
Rank from Nominal RollLance Sergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll17th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 9 October 1917
Place of death or woundingYpres, Belgium
Age at death22.6
Age at death from cemetery records22
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
82
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Joseph and Mary CORRIE, Maffra, Victoria. Native of Bacchus Marsh, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrother: 1737 Corporal Richard Wilkin CORRIE, 4th Bn, killed in action, 16 August 1916; Uncle killed Gallipoli; cousin killed in France; uncle returned; 4 cousins returned.~

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