Francis Ronald Joseph FLEMING

Regimental number2314
Place of birthMuswellbrook, New South Wales
SchoolConvent School
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationShop assistant
AddressMuswellbrook, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinFather, D. Fleming, Mitchell Street, Muswellbrook, New South Wales
Previous military service14th Infantry; Served in the Citizen Military Forces, Singleton, New South Wales.
Enlistment date29 August 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll22 September 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name31st Battalion, 4th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/48/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A68 Anchises on 14 March 1916
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll31st Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Mention in Despatches


Recommendation date: 2 October 1917

FateKilled in Action 29 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Belgium
Age at death23
Age at death from cemetery records23
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
110
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: David and Margaret FLEMING, Mitchell Street, Musswellbrook, New South Wales
Family/military connectionsBrothers: [2709] Lt David Richard FLEMING MC, 19th Bn, returned to Australia, 20 May 1919; 7241 Pte John Stanley FLEMING, 2nd Machine Gun Bn, returned to Australia, 24 July 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal