The AIF Project

Allen Gunn HODGMAN

Regimental number4325
Date of birth20 June 1897
Place of birthBrighton, Tasmania
Other NamesAllan George
SchoolBridgewater State School and Friends High School, Hobart, Tasmania
ReligionMethodist
OccupationEngineer
AddressBay Road, Newtown, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Next of kinFather, Mr T Hodgman, Newtown, Tasmania
Enlistment date13 September 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name12th Battalion, 13th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/29/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A19 Afric on 5 January 1916
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll52nd Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular'Hodgman, Alan Gunn No. 4325, 52nd Battalion was fifth and youngest son of Thomas C Hodgman who had lived in the Brighton District for many years as store keeper, miller and farmer and for 12 years was member of parliament for Brighton and afterwards the new district of Monmouth. Hodgman was born on the 'Macdin Erlegh' farm, Brighton, Tasmania on 20th June, 1897. He went first to Bridgwater State School and on to Friends High School, Hobart, where he held a good place in all sport. He stroked the first school rowing team to win the Burke Shield. In February, 1914 he entered Johnsons and Wells engineers devoting his spare time to football and rowing. He was a member of Derwent Rowing Club. He was one chosen to row in the champion eights for the inaugural race of 1916, which was abandoned on account of the war call. Corporal Hodgman was 6 feet 4 inches in height, a lad of great bearing, with a great personality and sense of responsibility - among his brothers he never shirked duty or blame.' (details from father)
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death20
Age at death from cemetery records20
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), 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
155
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated on Bridgewater State School Roll of Honour, Bridgewater, Tasmania. Parents: Thomas and Robina HODGMAN. Native of Brighton, Tasmania
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 4923 Lance Corporal Frank Rule HODGMAN, 52nd Bn, returned to Australia, 4 May 1917; 580 Pte Harry HODGMAN, 5th Bn, killed in action, 25 April 1915; Cousin: 441 Sergeant Cyrus Havelock LADE, 3rd Light Horse Regiment, died of wounds, 23 April 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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