The AIF Project

Paul PARKER

Regimental number1961
Place of birthCooma, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationMining engineer
AddressIronbark via Forbes, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation41
Next of kinBrother, George Albert Parker, Cowra Creek via Cooma, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date22 February 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name54th Battalion, 3rd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/71/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A37 Barambah on 23 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll34th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Age at death from cemetery records45
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
124
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: James and Elizabeth PARKER. Native of Cowra Creek, Cooma, New South Wales
Family/military connectionsNephews: [1853] Lt Edward Charles BARTLEY MM, 12th Field Artillery Brigade, returned to Australia, 12 July 1919; 1785 Pte Reginald BARTLEY, 33rd Bn, killed in action, 7 June 1917; 5035 Pte Patrick BARTLEY, 47th Bn, killed in action, 11 April 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Sydney, 23 June 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 25 August 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 21 November 1916.

Killed in action, 7-11 June 1916.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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