The AIF Project

William CROSSMAN

Regimental number2394
Place of birthBendigo, Victoria
SchoolDrouin South State School, Victoria
ReligionMethodist
OccupationLabourer
Address11 Station Street, Malvern, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation33
Height5' 9"
Weight146 lbs
Next of kinSister, Father, William Crossman; Mrs Joseph Roberts, 11 Station Street, Malvern, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date19 July 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll20 July 1916
Place of enlistmentMelbourne, Victoria
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name59th Battalion, 5th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/76/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A9 Shropshire on 25 September 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll59th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 26 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Belgium
Age at death32
Age at death from cemetery records34
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), 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
167
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Mary CROSSMAN. Native of Milloo, Victoria
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Melbourne, 25 September 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 11 November 1916. Marched in to 15th Training Bn, 21 November 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 30 December 1916; taken on strength, 59th Bn, France, 7 February 1917.

Killed in action, 26 September 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Personal effects being returned to next of kin were lost when the ship, 'Barunga', was lost at sea with all cargo, 'the result of enemy action'.

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