The AIF Project

William Henry HAIGH

Regimental number3340
Place of birthWoodspoint, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationBootmaker
Address88 Union Street, East Brunswick, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation30
Next of kinMother, Mrs E Haigh, Trawalla, 57 Beach Street, Hampton, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date8 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name8th Battalion, 11th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/25/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A71 Nestor on 11 October 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll6th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 15 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death34
Age at death from cemetery records32
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: Frederick and Emma HAIGH, 'Murilea', Beach Road, Sandringham, Victoria
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Taken on strength, 6th Bn, Serapeum, 22 February 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 25 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 30 March 1916. Attached to 1st Pioneer Bn, 28 September 1916; rejoined 6th Bn from detachment, 5 January 1917.

Admitted to 6th Australian Field Ambulance, 25 January 1917 (dental); transferred to 5th Division Rest Station, 25 January 1917; discharged to duty, 9 March 1917; rejoined unit, 10 March 1917.

Found guilty by Field General Court Martial, 26 June 1917, of when in billets being found beyond the limits fixed by Bn Routine Orders without a pass or written leave from his commanding officer, 27 May 1917: awarded 7 days' Field Punishment No. 2.

Found guilty, 4 July 1917, of disobedience of B[attalion] R[outine] O[rders] by failing to return leave pass to the Corporal of the Guard: awarded 12 days' Field Punishment No. 2.

On leave to England, 7 September 1917; rejoined Bn from leave, 22 September 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 15 October 1917.

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

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