The AIF Project

Vincent Dudley DACEY

Regimental number2125
Place of birthWaterloo, New South Wales
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationStockman
AddressCairns, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25.2
Weight140 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs J R Dacey, Livingstone Road, Marrickville, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date3 March 1915
Place of enlistmentCairns, Queensland
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name9th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/26/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A63 Karoola on 12 June 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll9th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Distinguished Conduct Medal


Conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty in organising parties for removal of wounded under heavy fire. (Bullecourt 6-7 May 1917).
Recommendation date: 14 May 1917

FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Miscellaneous details (Nominal Roll)Spelled Vicent Dudley Dacey on NR
Age at death from cemetery records27
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
55
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: J.R. and Martha Ellen DACEY, "Kanosia", 194 Livingstone Road, Marrickville, New South Wales
Medals

Military Medal


Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 189
Date: 8 November 1917

Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Admitted to hospital, Cambridge, 13 January 1916 (syphilis); total period of treatment for venereal disease: 193 days.

Medals: Military Medal, 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, DACEY Vincent Dudley

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