The AIF Project

John Wilton CUMMING

Regimental number2636
Place of birthHarden, New South Wales
Place of birthYoung, New South Wales
SchoolLexington, Kentucky, USA
ReligionProtestant
OccupationSelector
AddressNetherdale, Mackay, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation43
Height5' 9"
Weight142 lbs
Next of kinBrother, William Benjamin Cumming, Ipswich, Queensland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date8 July 1916
Place of enlistmentMackay, Queensland
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name49th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/66/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A40 Ceramic on 7 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll49th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingUnknown
Age at death42
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
148
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Benjamin CUMMING and Mary GAMMON
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 7 October 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 21 November 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 8 January 1917; taken on strength, 49th Bn, 15 January 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 7 June 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Second oldest brother, W.B. Cumming, wrote to Base Records, 20 May 1921: ' ... there is a brother older than myself. I have not seen him for years. To give a little family history. We were doubly orphaned about 35 years ago. There were no relatives of either parent in the country. My deceased brother John and I kept in touch always. I found the cash to send him to America to study, and upon his return to Queensland he made my home his home until the time he joined the A.I.F. I do not think I am wrong in stating that he did not see his elder brother twice in 25 years, and I have scarcely seen him a dozen times in over 30 years ... I can give no other information concerning surviving relatives of the deceased soldier. I assume they do survive.'

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