Francis Alexander FARRELL

Regimental number2367
Place of birthFitzroy, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationBootmaker
Address52 Victoria Street, West Melbourne, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinMother, Mrs A Farrell, 521 Victoria Street, West Melbourne, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed for 3 years in the Senior Cadets; for 2 years in the 64th Regiment (City of Melbourne), Citizen Military Forces (still serving at time of AIF enlistment).
Enlistment date31 May 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name6th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/23/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A64 Demosthenes on 16 July 1915
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll59th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 14 October 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), 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
167
Other details

War service: joined unit from reinforcements, Lemnos, 31 October 1915. Disembarked Alexandria, 7 January 1916 (general Gallipoli evacuation). Transferred to 58th Bn, 17 February 1916; to 59th Bn, 19 May 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 18 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 29 June 1916. Appointed Lance Corporal, 6 December 1916.

Admitted to 15th Australian Field Ambulance, 18 March 1917; transferred to Divisional Rest Station (debility); rejoined Bn, 6 April 1917. Detached to 2nd Army Rest Camp, 27 August 1917; rejoined Bn, 7 September 1917.

Killed in action, 14 October 1917. Buried by 1st Anzac Corps B.O.; grave subsequently destroyed in fighting.

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