The AIF Project

Owen Thomas DOMENEY

Regimental number2560
Place of birthZeehan, West Coast, Tasmania
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationOrchardist
AddressFlowerpot, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Next of kinFather, Samuel A Domeney, Flowerpot, Tasmania
Previous military service93rd Infantry
Enlistment date6 October 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name40th Battalion, 5th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/57/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A38 Ulysses on 25 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll40th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death17.9
Age at death from cemetery records17
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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
132
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Lemuel A.E. and Edith DOMENEY, "Mostyn Brae", Flowerpot Channel, Tasmania. Native of Zeehan, Tasmania
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 1514 Pte Edward Tolman DOMENEY MM, 12th Bn, returned to Australia, 25 November 1917; [1860] Captain William Lemuel Edward DOMENEY MC, 15th Bn, returned to Australia, 21 December 1918; Uncles: 2511 Pte Owen Stanley TOLMAN, 26th Bn, died of wounds, 10 August 1916; 2920 Pte Mostyn Edward TOLMAN, 26th Bn, returned to Australia, 26 September 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Print format    


© The AIF Project 2024, UNSW Canberra. Not to be reproduced without permission.