The AIF Project

Harry Lyell HENRY

Regimental number2821
Place of birthDevonport, Tasmania
Other NamesHENRY, Hary Lyell
SchoolHutchens School and Queens College, Hobart, Tasmania
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationGrocer
AddressStrahan, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Next of kinBrother, Fredrick Henry, Strahan, Tasmania
Previous military service91st Infantry
Enlistment date16 October 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll15 September 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name40th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/57/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A67 Orsova on 6 December 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll40th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularHad hardware training with Hawkes Bros., Geelong, Victoria
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death20
Age at death from cemetery records20
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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
132
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated in Strahan Cemetery, Tasmania. Parents: Frederick and Mary HENRY. Native of Devonport, Tasmania
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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