The AIF Project

Robert ADAMS

Regimental number3142
Place of birthDundee, Scotland
SchoolDundee Public School, Scotland
Age on arrival in Australia33
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationEngineer
AddressLeichhardt, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation38
Height5' 6"
Weight124 lbs
Next of kinWife, Mrs Kate Adams, 135 Augustus Stret, Leichhardt, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date6 December 1916
Place of enlistmentSydney, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name34th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/51/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A68 Anchises on 24 January 1917
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll34th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 21 May 1918
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Date of death12 October 1917
Age at death39
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
123
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 24 January 1917; disembarked Devonport, England, 27 March 1917.

Marched in, AIF Details, Fouvant, 2 April 1917; marched out, 9th Training Bn, Durrington, 7 April 1917.

Transferred from 34th Bn to 64th Bn, 28 April 1917.

Embarked Southampton to reinforce 34th Bn, France, 23 August 1917; marched in, 3rd Australian Divisional Depot, Roulles, 24 August 1917.

Taken on strength, 34th Bn, 2 September 1917.

Reported missing, Passchendaele, 12 October 1917.

Assistant Adjutant General, Australian Section, General Headquarters, 13 May 1918, pronounced fate, 'killed in action, Belgium 12 October 1917'.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, ADAMS Robert

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