The AIF Project

Leonard Bryant POUPARD

Regimental number882
Place of birthDalston, London, England
SchoolWilton Road Board School, Dalston, London, England
Age on arrival in Australia27
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationDraper
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation28
Next of kinMother, Mrs F A Poupard, c/o Mrs Crabtree, Main Road, Sea Point, Capetown, South Africa
Previous military serviceServed in the Zealandia Rifles for 10 months; in the Cape Town Highlanders for 1 year.
Enlistment date18 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name2nd Battalion, H Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/19/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board Transport A23 Suffolk on 18 October 1914
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll2nd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 6 November 1917
Age at death from cemetery records33
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
34
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Thomas and Florence POUPARD (AS SPELT), 29 Priest's Avenue, Petone, New Zealand. native of Dalston, London, England
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Wounded in action, Gallipoli, 25-30 April 1915; admitted to 17th General Hospital, Alexandria, 30 April 1915 (gun shot wound, forearm). transferred to Hospital Ship 'Nevasca', 15 May 1915; transferred to England, and admitted to 2nd Western General Hospital, 29 May 1915.

Embarked with 11 Draft to rejoin Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, 15 November 1915; arrived Mudros, 3 December 1915. Rejoined Bn at Gallipoli, 7 December 1915. Disembarked Alexandria, 28 December 1915.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 22 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 28 March 1916.

Detached for duty with 1st Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery, Belgium, 9 October 1916.

Admitted to 7th Australian Field Ambulance, 30 November 1916 (conjunctivitis); marched in to 1st Australian Divisional Base Depot, 8 December 1916; rejoined 2nd Bn, 30 December 1916.

Admitted to 1st Australian Field Ambulance, 31 March 1917 (diarrhoea); rejoined Bn, 12 April 1917.

On leave to England, 24 May 1917; rejoined Bn from leave, 10 June 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 6 November 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal
Miscellaneous detailsSurname incorrectly entered on Embarkation Roll as POURPARD.

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