The AIF Project

Hammond Henry JOHNSON

Regimental number2193
Place of birthBangalow, Byron Creek, New South Wales
SchoolBangalow Public School, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
AddressBillinudgel, Richmond River, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation24
Next of kinFather, Mr Horatio Edward Johnson, Tyagarah, Tweed River, New South Wales
Enlistment date28 March 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name49th Battalion, 4th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/66/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A42 Boorara on 16 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll49th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularThis son was one of six of my sons who enlisted, five in the A.I.F., and one in the Navy, two of the others were wounded, one twice, the other 3 times, two of them were away just on 4 years.
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Miscellaneous details (Nominal Roll)*Spelt Harmond Henry Johnson on NR
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death26
Age at death from cemetery records25
Place of burialNo known grave
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
148
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Horatio Edward and Sarah Jane JOHNSON, Bangalow, New South Wales
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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