The AIF Project

James SKILLEN

Regimental number276
Place of birthCatrine, Ayrshire, Scotland
SchoolNational School, Scotland
Age on arrival in Australia20
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationMiner
AddressLower Booval, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Next of kinFather, James Skillen, Grassbank Estate, Lower Booval, Queensland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date28 November 1915
Rank on enlistmentSapper
Unit nameMining Corps 1, Company 1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A38 Ulysses on 20 February 1916
Rank from Nominal RollSapper
Unit from Nominal Roll1st Tunnelling Company
FateKilled in Action 1 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Belgium
Age at death24
Age at death from cemetery records24
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
27
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: James and Isabella SKILLEN. Native of Catrine, Ayrshire, Scotland
Medals

Military Medal


Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 189
Date: 8 November 1917

Family/military connectionsBrothers: 293 Driver Andrew SKILLEN, 4th Machine Gun Bn, returned to Australia, 23 July 1919; 294 Pte John SKILLEN, 4th Machine Gun Bn, effective abroad (still overseas); 275 Corporal William SKILLEN, 1st Tunnelling Company, returned to Australia, 6 September 1919.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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