The AIF Project

Walter Theodore HASS

Regimental number2517
Place of birthGreenville, Wisconsin, United States of America
SchoolLutheran Parochial State and High Schools
Age on arrival in Australia10.4
ReligionMethodist
OccupationCleaner South Australian railways
AddressPetersburg, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinFather, Peter H Hass, Petersburg, South Australia
Previous military serviceServed in the Cadets, 81st Infantry.
Enlistment date5 May 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name48th Battalion, 5th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/65/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A68 Anchises on 28 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll48th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular'He was a Lieutenant of Cadets with the Citizen Forces. Resigned his rank to enlist in the AIF.'
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of death or woundingFrance
Age at death21.4
Age at death from cemetery records21
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
146
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Peter and Lisette HASS, Peterborough, South Australia. Native of Greenville, Wisconsin, United States of America
Family/military connectionsBrother: 6948 Pte Albert Fred HASS, 10th Bn, killed in action, 20-21 September 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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