Regimental number | 358 |
Place of birth | East Greta, New South Wales |
School | Public School, New South Wales |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Occupation | Labourer |
Address | Weston, New South Wales |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 20 |
Height | 5' 2.5" |
Weight | 116 lbs |
Next of kin | Father, James Atkinson, Fifth Street, Weston, New South Wales |
Previous military service | Nil (lived in exempt area under Compulsory Military Training scheme) |
Enlistment date | |
Place of enlistment | West Maitland, New South Wales |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 34th Battalion, B Company |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/51/1 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A20 Hororata on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 34th Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Passchendaele, Ypres, Belgium |
Age at death | 21.10 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The 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 | 123 |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Embarked Sydney, 2 May 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 23 June 1916. Found guilty, 20 October 1916, of being absent without leave from midnight, 20 October, until midnight, 22 October 1916: awarded 12 days' Field Punishment No 2, and forfeited 14 days' pay. Proceeded overseas to France, 21 November 1916. Marched out to Bomb School, 28 January 1917; rejoined 34th Bn, in the field, 5 February 1917. Detached to Small Arms Course, 2 August 1917; rejoined Bn from detachment, 21 August 1917. Killed in action, 12 October 1917. Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |
Sources | NAA: B2455, ATKINSON Robert |