Herbert William GREENWOOD

Regimental number76
Place of birthTodmarden England
ReligionBaptist
OccupationFarm labourer
AddressBunbury, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinMother, Mrs S Greenwood, Cornholm-Todmorden, Yorkshire, England
Enlistment date25 February 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name28th Battalion, A Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/45/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia,
30 Officers and 982 Other Ranks embarked at Fremantle on HMAT A11 'Ascanius' on 29 June 1915; 12 others embarked at Fremantle on HMAT A36 'Thirty-Six' on 12 July 1916. From Embarkation Records it is not possible to distinguish the latter 12.
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll2nd Machine Gun Battalion
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
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.

Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Sarah GREENWOOD, 24 Carr Bottom, Cornholme, Todmorden, Yorks, England. Native of Todmorden
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

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