Zillman GERAGHTY

Regimental number31925
Place of birthGowrie Junction, Queensland
SchoolState School, Tannymorel, Queensland
ReligionFreethinker
OccupationLabourer
AddressTannymorel via Warwick, Queensland
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation28
Next of kinWife, Mrs E A Geraghty, Tannymorel via Warwick, Queensland
Enlistment date29 June 1916
Rank on enlistmentGunner
Unit nameField Artillery Brigade 13, Reinforcement 10
AWM Embarkation Roll number13/40/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board RMS Osterley on 10 February 1917
Rank from Nominal RollGunner
Unit from Nominal Roll3rd Field Artillery Brigade
FateKilled in Action 30 September 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death29
Age at death from cemetery records29
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
12
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Thomas and Ellen GERAGHTY; husband of Elizabeth GERAGHTY, Tannymorel, Queensland
Family/military connectionsCousin: Major Sidney Hodgins DSO, Brisbane and Tewantin, Queensland
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal