The AIF Project

Donald Herbert CULBARD

Regimental number2330
Place of birthLiverpool, England
SchoolDollar Academy, Clackmannanshire, Scotland
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationBaker
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Height5' 6.75"
Weight140 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs Emily Culbard, Park Gate Road, Neston, Cheshire, England
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date6 April 1915
Place of enlistmentKeswick, South Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name12th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/29/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT Persia on 10 June 1915
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll52nd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 28 August 1917
Place of death or woundingSomme, France
Age at death21.9
Age at death from cemetery records21
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
155
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Wallace and Emlie CULBARD, Park Gate Road, Neston, Cheshire, England. Native of Dollar, Scotland
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Taken on strength, 12th Bn, Gallipoli, 28 September 1915.

Disembarked Alexandria, 6 January 1916 (general Gallipoli evacuation).

Transferred to 52nd Bn, Railhead, 1 March 1916.

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 5 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 12 June 1916.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 3 October 1916.

Appointed Corporal, 8 November 1916.

Admitted to NZ Stationary Hospital, Amiens, 12 March 1917 (injured heel); transferred to 1st Australian General Hospital, Rouen, 29 March 1917; to No 2 Convalescent Depot, 7 April 1917; discharged to Base Details, 2 May 1917.

Found guilty, 2 May 1917, of irregular conduct, viz. posting a letter in French Post Office in order to avoid Censor at Rouen, 27 April 1917: reprimanded.

Killed in action, Belgium, 28 August 1918.

Handwritten note on Form B103: 'Buried W. of Messines, France [sic].'

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal
Miscellaneous detailsNext of kin address incorrectly recorded on Embarkation Roll as Western Cheshire, England.
SourcesNAA: B2455, CULBARD Donald Herbert

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