The AIF Project

Felix Edward TARDENT

Regimental number729
Place of birthRoma, Queensland
SchoolWynnum Central School, Queensland
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation19
Next of kinMother, Mrs Hortense Tardent, 'Ormonts', Wynnum, Queensland
Previous military serviceServed in the Atherton Cadet Corps, Queensland.
Enlistment date13 December 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name42nd Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/59/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A30 Borda on 5 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll42nd Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular

'According to his Officers and mates, he made the voluntary sacrifice of his life to save his platoon from annihilation by a German machine gun which he put out of action with hand grenades.' (details from mother)

FateKilled in Action 31 July 1917
Place of death or woundingSteingast Farm, between Messines and Warneton, Belgium
Age at death18.6
Age at death from cemetery records18
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
136
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Henry A. and Hortense TARDENT, 'Ormonts', Brisbane Road, Wynnum, Queensland. Native of Roma
Family/military connectionsBrothers: Lt Jules Louis TARDENT, Croix de Guerre, 42nd Bn, returned to Australia; 7359 Corporal Emile Auguste TARDENT MM, 9th Bn, returned to Australia; Cousin: 40 Corporal Oswald Urbin TARDENT, 25th Bn, killed in action, Morlancourt, France, 14 June 1918.
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.