Joseph PEACOCK

Regimental number879
Place of birthMount Nicholas, Tasmania
SchoolState School, Tasmania
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationMiner
AddressHolmesville, West Maitland, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinFather, Thomas Peacock, Holmesville, West Maitland, New South Wales
Previous military serviceServed in the School Cadets.
Enlistment date15 December 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll4 December 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name35th Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/52/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A24 Benalla on 1 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll35th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death22
Age at death from cemetery records22
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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
126
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Thomas and Charlotte PEACOCK, High Street, Greta, New South Wales. Native of Tasmania
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 1440 Pte George PEACOCK MM, 35th Bn, returned to Australia, 2 March 1919; another brother; brother-in-law [cannot be further identified].
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Sydney, 1 May 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 9 July 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 21 November 1916.

Killed in action, 7 June 1917.

Buried East of mines crater in German reserve lines, in shell hole.

Buried East to West facing North, 1 mile South of Messines, Belgium. Grave destroyed in subsequent fighting.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal