The AIF Project

Arthur NICHOLLS

Regimental number31085
Place of birthBradford, Yorkshire, England
SchoolGrammar School, Saltwell Road, Gateshead, Co. Durham, England
Age on arrival in Australia21
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationTram conductor
Address'Kilross', Bunnerong Road, South Randwick, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation24
Next of kinFather, L Nicholls, 'Kilross', Bunnerong Road, South Randwick, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceServed in the Territorial Force, Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.
Enlistment date8 October 1916
Rank on enlistmentGunner
Unit nameField Artillery Brigade 1, Reinforcement 23
AWM Embarkation Roll number13/29/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board RMS Orontes on 19 December 1916
Rank from Nominal RollGunner
Unit from Nominal Roll14th Light Trench Mortar Battery
FateKilled in Action 29 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Belgium
Age at death24
Age at death from cemetery records24
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
20
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Levi and Mary Elizabeth NICHOLLS, Hinck's Street, South Kensington, Sydney. Native of Bradford, England
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.