Regimental number | 3298 |
Place of birth | Brisbane, Queensland |
School | Christian Brothers Catholic School, Brisbane, Queensland |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Occupation | Dairyman |
Address | Melbourne Street, West End, South Brisbane, Queensland |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 22 |
Next of kin | Father, J Ford, Upper Melbourne Street, South Brisbane, Queensland |
Enlistment date | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 15th Battalion, 11th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/32/2 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A48 Seang Bee on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 47th Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | France |
Age at death from cemetery records | 23 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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 | 143 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: James and Mary FORD, Hall's Avenue, Norman Park, Queensland. Native of Brisbane, Queensland |
Family/military connections | Brother who was killed. (James Ford, Father) |
Other details |
War service: Egypt, Western Front Joined 15th Bn, Moascar, 5 February 1916. transferred to 47th Bn, Tel el Kebir, 3 March 1916. Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 2 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 9 June 1916. Wounded in action, 12 August 1916 (shell shock); admitted to 24th General Hospital, Etaples, 13 August 1916; rejoined unit, 11 September 1916. Killed in action, 7 June 1917. Buried 750 yards east of Messines; grave lost in subsequent fighting. Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal |