The AIF Project

Thomas Edwin BAIRD

Regimental number831
Place of birthFranklin, South Australia
ReligionMethodist
OccupationCinematograph operator
AddressNeales Flat, via Eudunda, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Height5' 8.5"
Weight134 lbs
Next of kinFather, Alex Baird, Neales Flat, via Eudunda, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil (exempt area under Compulsory Military Training scheme)
Enlistment date17 February 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll17 February 1916
Place of enlistmentAdelaide, South Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name43rd Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/60/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A19 Afric on 9 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll43rd Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted 17 February 1916. Taken on strength, 43rd Bn, 15 April 1917. Promoted Lance Corporal, 20 June 1917.
FateKilled in Action 31 July 1917
Date of death31 July 1917
Place of burialNo Known Grave
Commemoration detailsThe 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
136
Family/military connectionsBrother: 5953 Lance Corporal John Oliver BAIRD, 4th Motor Transport Company, returned to Australia, 18 July 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, BAIRD Thomas Edwin

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