William Robert Chloride POLLARD

Regimental number850
Place of birthBroken Hill, New South Wales
ReligionMethodist
OccupationLabourer
AddressMoonta, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation24
Height5' 4"
Weight140 lbs
Next of kinFather, William Thomas Pollard, Moonta, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date14 February 1916
Place of enlistmentKadina, South Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name43rd Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/60/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A19 Afric on 9 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll43rd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 31 July 1917
Age at death from cemetery records26
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
137
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated in Moonta Cemetery, South Australia. Parents: William and Fanny POLLARD, Browning Road, Moonta Mines, South Australia
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Adelaide, 9 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 20 July 1916; proceeded to England.

Proceeded overseas to France, 25 November 1916.

Admitted to 9th Field Ambulance, 18 January 1917 (hernia); transferred to 32nd Stationary Hospital, Wimereux, 20 January 1917; to 1st Convalescent Depot, 18 February 1917; rejoined 43rd Bn, 23 March 1917.

Admitted to 9th Field Ambulance, 24 April 1917 (myalgia); returned to duty, 28 April 1917.

Killed in action, 31 July 1917.

Entry for Menin Gate Memorial Register gives date of death incorrectly as 31 August 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, POLLARD William Robert Chloride