The AIF Project

John David BLENKINSOP

Regimental number710
Place of birthNorton, Doncaster, Yorkshire, England
SchoolRotherham, Yorkshire, England
Age on arrival in Australia18
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationMiner
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinMother, Mrs J Blenkinsop, 20 Newport Avenue, Selby, Yorkshire, England
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date13 September 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name13th Battalion, G Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/30/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board TRANSPORT A38 Ulysses on 22 December 1914
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll45th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Military Medal


Recommendation date: 24 June 1916

FateKilled in Action 8 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death23
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
139
Medals

Military Medal

'On the night of the 19th and 20th August, 1915, Sergeant BLENKINSOP (then Corporal of "D" Company 13th Battalion A.I.F.) was sent out to gain information as to the nature of the country in front, in view of an attack by the 13th Battalion on the 21st August. This work was carried out by him very skilfully in face of considerable danger and the information gained was of considerable use in the attack that followed.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 62
Date: 19 April 1917

Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

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

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