The AIF Project

Finley LAIRD

Regimental number2838
Place of birthCobar, New South Wales
SchoolChristian Brothers (Catholic) School, Rockhampton, Queensland
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationShearer
Addressc/o Mrs E Laird, Canning Street, Rockhampton, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Next of kinFather, Mr Charles Finley Laird, c/o Mrs E Laird, Canning Street, Rockhampton, Queensland
Enlistment date20 October 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name42nd Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/59/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A64 Demosthenes on 23 December 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll42nd Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularReported missing 3rd July. Reported killed in action following February. Information from [2912] Pte [Thomas] Hick.
FateKilled in Action 31 July 1917
Place of death or woundingWarneton, Messines Battle, Belgium
Age at death26
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
135
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Charles and Ellen LAIRD, Oxford Road, Rockhampton, Queensland. Native of Cobar, New South Wales
Family/military connectionsBrother: 1675 Pte Donald Charles LAIRD, 52nd Bn, died of wounds, 30 January 1917; Step-brother: 4530 Pte Michael Thomas QUINN, 26th Bn, returned to Australia, 15 May 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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