Regimental number | 3246A |
Place of birth | Magill, South Australia |
School | Magill Public and Norwood High Schools, South Australia |
Religion | Baptist |
Occupation | Labourer |
Address | Prosser Avenue, Norwood, South Australia |
Marital status | Single |
Next of kin | Mother, Mrs E E Nation, Prosser Avenue, Norwood, South Australia |
Previous military service | Served in the Senior Cadets for 3 years; 1 year in the 79th Infantry, Citizen Military Forces (still serving at time of AIF enlistment). |
Enlistment date | |
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 10th Battalion, 11th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/27/3 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A24 Benalla on |
Regimental number from Nominal Roll | 3246 |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 50th Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Messines, Belgium |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The 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 | 151 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: Samuel and Emily NATION, Morphettville, South Australia. Native of Howe Park, Magill |
Family/military connections | Brothers: 4541 Pte Clifford Storry NATION, 10th Bn, killed in action, 6 May 1917; 149 Pte Ralph NATION, 7th Field Company Engineers, died of wounds, 6 March 1917; also three cousins from SA (Emily Elizabeth Nation, mother). |
Other details |
War service: Egypt, Western Front Allotted to 50th Bn, Zeitoun, 29 February 1916. Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 5 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 12 June 1916. Admitted to 3rd Canadian General Hospital, Boulogne, 15 September 1916 (influenza); rejoined unit, 5 May 1917. Killed in action, 10 June 1917. Buried 1 mile N.E. of Messines, Belgium. Grave destroyed in subsequent fighting. Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal |