The AIF Project

William BELLCHAMBERS

Regimental number1014
Place of birthLondon, England
Age on arrival in Australia32
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationPlasterer
AddressBelmont, Albert Road, Croydon Park, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation35
Next of kinBrother, P Bellchambers, 96 Murray Street, Islington, London, England
Previous military serviceServed 7 years in the British Army.
Enlistment date14 September 1914
Place of enlistmentSydney, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentLance Corporal
Unit name1st Battalion, H Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/18/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board Transport A19 Afric on 18 October 1914
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll1st Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Military Medal


Recommendation date: 9 September 1916

FateKilled in Action 3 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Date of death3 October 1917
Age at death38
Age at death from cemetery records37
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
28
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Peter Antonie and Annie BELLCHAMBERS, husband of Mrs L.L. BELLCHAMBERS, 64 Herbert Street, New North Road, London, England
Medals

Military Medal


Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 62
Date: 19 April 1917

Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

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

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