George Ferguson RATTRAY

Regimental number4286
Place of birthDundee, Scotland
SchoolRosebank School, Dundee, Scotland
Age on arrival in Australia18
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationLabourer
Address14 Atchison Street, North Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Next of kinMother, Mrs A Rattray, 58 Victoria Road, Dundee, Scotland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date5 September 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name3rd Battalion, 13th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/20/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A60 Aeneas on 20 December 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll2nd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of death or woundingBelgium
Age at death23.11
Age at death from cemetery records23
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: John and Ann RATTRAY, 58 Victoria Road, Dundee, Scotland
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Taken on strength, 2nd Bn, Tel el Kebir, 14 February 1916.

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

Wounded in action, 22 July 1916 (gun shot wound, right arm and back); transferred to England, 31 July 1916, and admitted to 1st Eastern General Hospital, Cambridge. Marched into No. 2 Command Depot, 31 August 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 14 October 1916; transferred to and taken on strength of 45th Bn, 29 October 1916; transferred to 2nd Bn, 2 December 1916.

Killed in action, Belgium, 20 September 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal