The AIF Project

Michael Francis STARR

Regimental number3464
Place of birthBendigo, Victoria
SchoolChristian Brothers High School, St. Kilda, Victoria
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationClerk
AddressComely Bank, Healesville, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation26
Height5' 9"
Weight130 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs Mary Starr, Comely Bank, Healesville, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date3 August 1915
Place of enlistmentMelbourne, Victoria
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name8th Battalion, 11th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/25/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A71 Nestor on 11 October 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll6th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death28
Age at death from cemetery records28
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
48
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Michael and Mary STARR, 'Comely Bank', Healesville, Victoria. Native of Bendigo, Victoria
Family/military connectionsBrothers: 3465 Pte Patrick James STARR, 6th Bn, killed in action, 4 October 1917 (same day as Michael Starr); 6891 Corporal Phillip Henry STARR, 22nd Bn, returned to Australia, 25 January 1919; 1311 Pte John Robert STARR, 14th Bn, returned to Australia, 11 March 1916.
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, STARR Michael Francis

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