The AIF Project

Robert Emmett HANNAN

Regimental number3416
Place of birthTownsville, Queensland
SchoolChristian Brothers College, 5th class
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationBlacksmith striker
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Next of kinFather, Daniel Hannan, Derby Street, off George Street, Rockhampton, Queensland
Previous military serviceServed in the Citizen Forces, 1st Military District, Queensland for three years.
Enlistment date14 February 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name31st Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/48/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A49 Seang Choon on 4 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll31st Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records20
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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: Daniel and Mary HANNAN, 134 Derby Street, Rockhampton, Queensland. Native of Townsville
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 1647 Pte Arthur Kennedy HANNAN, 49th Bn, returned to Australia, 1 May 1919; 4401 Pte Daniel HANNAN, 31st Bn, returned to Australia, 5 July 1919; 3105A Pte Thomas Patrick HANNAN, 4th Pioneer Bn, returned to Australia, 19 June 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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