The AIF Project

Glen Roy BATES

Regimental number551
Place of birthKangaroo Island, South Australia
SchoolState School, South Australia
ReligionMethodist
OccupationLabourer
AddressHog Bay, Kangaroo Island, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinHarry Bates, Hog Bay, Kangaroo Island, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date25 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name10th Battalion, D Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/27/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board Transport A11 Ascanius on 20 October 1914
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll10th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Military Medal


Great bravery and devotion to duty on patrol work. (Polygon Wood, 19-20 September 1917)
Recommendation date: 7 October 1917

FateKilled in Action 8 October 1917
Place of death or woundingYpres, Belgium
Date of death8 October 1917
Age at death25.6
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
58
Medals

Military Medal

'During the operations at POLYGON WOOD, east of YPRES on 20th September, 1917, Pte. BATES showed great bravery and devotion to duty when, as an observer, he moved out in front of the Battalion and there, by his determination to hang on and his personal disregard of personal safety, he gained and sent back much useful information as to the enemy's movements on his positions of assembly.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 31
Date: 7 March 1918

Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

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

Print format    


© The AIF Project 2024, UNSW Canberra. Not to be reproduced without permission.