Regimental number | 2887 |
Place of birth | Saddleworth, South Australia |
School | Adelaide High School, South Australia |
Religion | Methodist |
Occupation | Coachbuilder |
Address | Romney Road, Marryatville, South Australia |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 18 |
Next of kin | Mother, Mrs Esther Bidgood, 'Wyndham', Percy Street, Semaphore, South Australia |
Previous military service | 77th Infantry; Served in the Cadets. |
Enlistment date | |
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 50th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/67/3 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A19 Afric on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 50th Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Passchendaele, Ypres, Belgium |
Age at death | 18.8 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 18 |
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. |
Panel number, Roll of Honour, Australian War Memorial | 150 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: Richard and Esther BIDGOOD, 5 Romney Road, Marryatville, South Australia |
Family/military connections | Brothers: 3819 Pte Arthur Edward Frank BIDGOOD, 32nd Bn, returned to Australia, 9 December 1918; 8819 Corporal Gilbert Leo BIDGOOD, 8th Depot Unit of Supply, returned to Australia, 23 December 1919; 5871 Driver Howard Clifford BIDGOOD, 20th Company, Australian Army Service Corps, returned to Australia, 6 November 1918. |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |