Regimental number | 2446 |
Place of birth | Crookwell, New South Wales |
School | Crookwell Public School, New South Wales |
Religion | Church of England |
Occupation | Farmer |
Address | Crookwell, New South Wales |
Marital status | Married |
Age at embarkation | 26 |
Next of kin | Wife, Mrs Winifred Clara McDonald, Crookwell, New South Wales |
Previous military service | 11th Light Horse; Served as a Sergeant in the Light Horse, Crookwell. |
Enlistment date | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 56th Battalion, 5th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/73/3 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A60 Aeneas on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 56th Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Polygon Wood, Ypres, Belgium |
Date of death | |
Age at death | 28 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 28 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The 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. |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Commemorated in Crookwell Cemetery, New South Wales. Headstone inscription reads: 'His resting place a hero's grave'. Parents: William (d. 2 March 1909, aged 68; bu. Crookwell Cemetery) and Christina (d. 30 January 1919, aged 64; bu. Crookwell Cemetery) McDONALD |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |