The AIF Project

Vernon Llewellyn BOVELL

Regimental number381
Place of birthBusselton, Western Australia
SchoolChristian Brothers (Catholic) College, Busselton, Western Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationClerk
AddressWest Australian Bank, Perth, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinMrs W J Bovell c/o M F Bovell, West Australian Bank, Perth, Western Australia
Previous military serviceServed in the Senior Cadets, Western Australia.
Enlistment date2 September 1914
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll18 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name11th Battalion, Machine Gun Section
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A11 Ascanius on 2 November 1914
Rank from Nominal Roll2nd Lieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll12th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 15 September 1917
Place of death or woundingYpres, Belgium
Age at death21.9
Age at death from cemetery records23
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
65
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Clara Ann and the late William James BOVELL, Busselton, Western Australia
Family/military connectionsBrother: 2145 Pte Cecil Alexander BOVELL, 44th Bn, returned to Australia, 21 December 1917.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

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

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