The AIF Project

Charles Thomas JOHNSON

Regimental number3017
Place of birthStrathalbyn, South Australia
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationClerk
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinFather, Charles Johnson, 30 Forrest Street, Boulder City, Western Australia
Enlistment date20 June 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name48th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A8 Argyllshire on 9 November 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll48th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 9 June 1917
Age at death from cemetery records21
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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: Charles and Annie Margaret JOHNSON, 30 Forrest St, Boulder, Western Australia. Native of Strathalbyn, South Australia
Family/military connectionsBrother: 7761 Driver Herbert Austin JOHNSON MM, 4th Motor Transport Section, effective abroad.
Other details

War service: embarked from Fremantle, 9 November 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 10 January 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 10 April 1917; taken on strength, 48th Bn, 15 April 1917.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 28 May 1917.

Killed in action, 9 June 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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