The AIF Project

Gustav Gottlieb Berthold SPORN

Regimental number1948
Place of birthYanyarrie, South Australia
SchoolYanyarrie Public School, South Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarm hand
AddressYanyarrie, via Carrieton, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20.4
Height5' 7.5"
Weight140 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs Caroline J. Sporn, same address
Previous military serviceMember for 1 year of Yanyarrie Rifle Club; still a member at time of AIF enlistment.
Enlistment date30 May 1916
Place of enlistmentAdelaide, South Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name43rd Battalion, 2nd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/60/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A70 Ballarat on 12 August 1916
Regimental number from Nominal Roll1948A
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll35th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Miscellaneous details (Nominal Roll)*Given name Gustav Gottlieb
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death21.9
Age at death from cemetery records21
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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
126
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Frederick Gottlieb Ernst and Caroline Jahana SPORN, Yanyarrie, South Australia
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, SPORN Gustav Gottlieb Berthold

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