The AIF Project

Frederick HEASMAN

Regimental number291
Place of birthEast Chiltington, Sussex, England
SchoolEast Chiltington, Sussex, England
Age on arrival in Australia23
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationRepairer
AddressMaryvale, Wounerup, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation24
Next of kinBrother, Gilbert Heasman, Mount Magnet, Western Australia
Enlistment date3 March 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll1 March 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name28th Battalion, B Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/45/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A11 Ascanius on 29 June 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll4th Machine Gun Battalion
FateKilled in Action 26 September 1917
Place of death or woundingFrance
Age at death27
Age at death from cemetery records27
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
178
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Edric and Annie HEASMAN, Markstakes Farm, Chailey, Sussex, England. Native of Sussex
Family/military connectionsBrothers: Lt Albert HEASMAN MM, 16th Bn, returned to Australia, 16 June 1919; 2154 Lance Corporal Gilbert Arthur HEASMAN MM, 11th Bn, returned to Australia, 28 February 1919.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Re-embarked, 18 July 1916, on board HMAT A48 'Seang Bee', as 291, Private, 4th Machine Gun Company, 3rd Reinforcement.

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

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