The AIF Project

Horatio SCOTT

Regimental number559
Place of birthDundee, Scotland
SchoolPublic School
Age on arrival in Australia30
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationElectrical mechanic
Address26 Gilpin Street, Camperdown, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation36
Next of kinMother, Mrs M Scott, 26 Gilpin Street, Camperdown, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceServed forv 15 years in the Royal Navy - 10 years at sea and 5 years in the Royal Naval Reserve.
Enlistment date13 June 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 1, Reinforcement 9
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/6/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A67 Orsova on 6 December 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll21st Machine Gun Company
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularBefore going to the war he worked in the electric light department of the Sydney City Council.
FateKilled in Action 27 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Belgium
Age at death37
Age at death from cemetery records37
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
179
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Mary Crockell SCOTT, 26 Gilpin Street, Camperdown, New South Wales. Native of Dundee, Scotland
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Print format    


© The AIF Project 2024, UNSW Canberra. Not to be reproduced without permission.