George Edward POLACK

Regimental number6108
ReligionCongregational
OccupationClerk
Address35 Burt Street, North Perth, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinFather, J E Polack, 35 Burt Street, North Perth, Western Australia
Previous military service37th Battery Australian Field Artillery
Enlistment date14 September 1915
Rank on enlistmentGunner
Unit nameField Artillery Brigade 3, Reinforcement 12
AWM Embarkation Roll number13/31/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A62 Wandilla on 9 November 1915
Rank from Nominal RollGunner
Unit from Nominal Roll3rd Field Artillery Brigade
FateKilled in Action 22 October 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
13
Medals

Military Medal

'At POZIERES, FRANCE, on 5th. and 6th. August 1916, Gunner POLACK volunteered as Runner to liaison officer and carried ten messages through heavy hostile barrage fire. He repaired telephone lines and maintained communication under partiticularly severe shell fire, rendering very important service to both his battery and the brigade.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 62
Date: 19 April 1917

Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

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