The AIF Project

Alban ARMITAGE

Regimental number541
Place of birthSheffield, England
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationSanitary inspector
AddressCasino, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation35
Next of kinWife, Mrs Pearl Ellen Lillie Armitage, Muswellbrook, New South Wales
Previous military serviceServed in the Infantry, Citizen Military Forces (resigned).
Enlistment date7 August 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 11, Reinforcement 8
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/16/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board RMS Osterley on 14 February 1917
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll11th Machine Gun Company
FateKilled in Action 31 July 1917
Age at death from cemetery records36
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
177
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: George and Mary ARMITAGE; husband of Pearl ARMITAGE, 125 Edwin Stret, Croydon, New South Wales. Native of Sheffield, England
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Melbourne, 14 February 1917; disembarked Plymouth, England, 11 April 1917; marched in to Machine Gun Training Depot, Grantham, 12 April 1917 Found guilty, 27 May 1917, of overstaying leave pass, midnight, 27 May 1917, to 10.30 am, 29 May 1917: awarded 7 days' confined to barracks and forfeiture of 2 days' pay.

Proceeded overseas to France, 5 June 1917; taken on strength, 11th Machine Gun Company, 13 June 1917.

Killed in action, 31 July 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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