The AIF Project

James George ECCLESTON

Regimental number157
Date of birth17 May 1893
Place of birthSurry Hills, New South Wales
SchoolGlebe Superior Public School, Sydney, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationBoxmaker
Address49 Baptist Street, Redfern, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinMother, Mrs Jane Eccleston, 49 Baptist Street, Redfern, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceServed for 6 years in the Royal Australian Naval reserve. Prior to joining the AIF he served in the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force in German New Guinea: enlisted 16 August 1914; discharged, 5 March 1915.~
Enlistment date19 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name30th Battalion, A Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/47/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A72 Beltana on 9 November 1915
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll30th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Mention in Despatches


Awarded, and promulgated, 'London Gazette', second Supplement, No. 30107 (1 June 1917); 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 169 (4 October 1917).
Recommendation date: 9 March 1917

FateKilled in Action 29 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Woods, Belgium
Age at death24
Age at death from cemetery records24
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
117
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: James and Jane Josephine ECCLESTON, 49 Baptist Street, Redfern, New South Wales. Native of Surry Hills
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Disembarked Suez, 11 December 1915.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 16 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 23 June 1916. Appointed Lance Corporal, 1 October 1916; Temporary Corporal, 16 January 1917; Corporal, 2 March 1917; Temporary Sergeant, 7 April 1917; Sergeant, 12 April 1917.

Mentioned in Despatches.

Admitted to 8th Australian Field Ambulance, 16 May 1917 (trench feet); rejoined Bn, 7 June 1917.

Killed in action, 29 September 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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