The AIF Project

Harold GILCHRIST

Regimental number2474
Date of birth--/07/1893
Place of birthSouth Melbourne, Victoria
SchoolAlbert Park State School, Victoria
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationLedgerkeeper
Address34 Barkley Street, Glenferrie, Melbourne, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinFather, R Gilchrist, 34 Barkley Street, Glenferrie, Melbourne, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed in 48th Kooyong Cadet Bn as LT
Enlistment date22 June 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name6th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/23/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A64 Demosthenes on 16 July 1915
Regimental number from Nominal RollCommissioned
Rank from Nominal RollLieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll6th Battalion
Promotions

2nd Lieutenant


Unit: INF6
Promotion date: 12 March 1916

Lieutenant


Unit: INF6
Promotion date: 14 July 1916

FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death24
Age at death from cemetery records24
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
46
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Robert and Marion GILCHRIST, Fitzmaurice Street, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. Native of Glenferrie, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrothers: Captain Robert Bruce GILCHRIST, 58th Bn, returned to Australia, 8 September 1918; Lt Andrew Hardie GILCHRIST, 10th General Service Reinforcements, returned to Australia, 4 January 1919; 69032 Pte Arthur Allan GILCHRIST, 16th General (Victorian) Reinforcements, embarked 7 November 1918; ship recalled owing to cessation of hostilities.~
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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