The AIF Project

William Thomas LANE

Regimental number20818
Place of birthIslington, London, England
SchoolSt Bartholomews, Sheperton Rd, Islington, London, England
Age on arrival in Australia19
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationStockman
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinFather, J E Lane, 60 Howard Road, Stoke Newington, London, England
Enlistment date4 October 1915
Rank on enlistmentGunner
Unit name9th Field Artillery Brigade, 33rd Battery
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A8 Argyllshire on 11 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollGunner
Unit from Nominal Roll12th Field Artillery Brigade
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularScout Leader in Boy Scouts movement. Captains of Football, Boxing, Swimming. Winner of Challenge Cup for swimming for 3 years. Also Bell Medal for best shooting.
FateKilled in Action 25 September 1917
Place of death or woundingAmiens, France
Age at death23.3
Age at death from cemetery records23
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
17
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John adn Jane LANE, 16 Northampton Grove, Canonbury, London
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Print format    


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