The AIF Project

Arthur Vivian PARKHURST

Regimental number6619
Place of birthKent, England
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationSalesman
Address6 Portland Place, South Yarra, Victoria
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation37
Next of kinWife, Mrs Ethel Grace, 6 Portland Place, South Yarra, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date27 June 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll19 May 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name8th Battalion, 21st Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/25/5
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A71 Nestor on 2 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll23rd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 9 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records39
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
100
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Husband of Mrs E PARKHURST-JONES, 105 Richardson Street, Albert Park, Victoria
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Melbourne, 2 October 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 16 November 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 20 August 1917; taken on strength, 23rd Bn, 1 September 1917.

Reported missing in action, Belgium, 9 October 1917; Court of Inquiry, 11 January 1918, confirmed fate as killed in action.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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