Frederick George PAGE

Regimental number2254
Place of birthPerth, Western Australia
SchoolCleveland School, Western Australia
Other trainingBoxing
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationStoreman
Address14 Foley Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Next of kinMother, Mrs D Page, 14 Foley Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date28 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name17th Battalion, 4th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/34/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A8 Argyllshire on 30 September 1915
Rank from Nominal RollLance Sergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll5th Machine Gun Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular

He won a boxing contest on the way over to France and another in France, becoming the Light Weight Champion. 'He was loved by all his comrades and was always ready to fight when called upon.' (Details from Mother: Dorothea Henrietta Page of Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales)

FateKilled in Action 9 October 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death20
Age at death from cemetery records20
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
179
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Frederick and Dorathea PAGE, Oxford Street, Post Office, Darlinghurst, New South Wales
Family/military connectionsBrother: 3607 Pte Charles Richard PAGE, 30th Bn, killed in action, 23 March 1917: Uncle killed in action; Nephews: returned to Australia.
Other details

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