The AIF Project

Alexander CUTHILL

Regimental number7581
Place of birthEdinbugh Scotland
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationCoppersmith
AddressLithgow, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation36
Height5' 10"
Weight164 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs E. Cuthill, Torbothie Road, Shotts, Lanarkshire, Scotland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date4 May 1917
Place of enlistmentLithgow, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name2nd Battalion, 25th Reinforcement
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board H.M.A.T. A20 Hororata on 14 June 1917
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll2nd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 16 March 1918
Age at death from cemetery records37
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
32
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Alexander and Elizabeth CUTHILL, Rosehill Cottage, Torbothie Road, Shotts, Lanarkshire, Scotland. Native of Selkirk, Scotland
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 14 June 1917; disembarked Liverpool, England, 26 August 1917; marched in to 1st Training Bn, Durrington, 27 August 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 23 January 1918; taken on strength, 2nd Bn, in the field, 31 January 1918.

Killed in action, Belgium, 16 March 1918.

Note on Form B103: 'Probably buried near --- House 2500 yds N of Hollebeke ...'

Grave subsequently lost.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, CUTHILL Alexander

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