The AIF Project

John BRADSHAW

Regimental number3025
Place of birthMiller's Point, Sydney, New South Wales
Place of birthSydney, New South Wales
SchoolRedfern Public School, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationDyer
Address32 Botany Street, Waterloo, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Height5' 6"
Weight122 lbs
Next of kinFriend (foster-mother), M Surman, 32 Botany Street, Waterloo, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date14 August 1915
Place of enlistmentHolsworthy, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name19th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/36/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A29 Suevic on 20 December 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll4th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingBroodseinde Ridge, Passchendaele, Belgium
Date of death4 October 1917
Age at death18
Age at death from cemetery records20
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
39
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Taken on strength, Tel el Kebir, 14 February 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 23 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 30 March 1916.

Wounded in action, 19 August 1916 (gun shot wound, head); admitted to 26th General Hospital, Etaples, 20 August 1916; transferred to No. 6 Convalescent Depot, 21 August 1916; rejoined 4th Bn, 29 September 1916.

Admitted to 7th Australian Field Ambulance, 2 December 1916 (sore feet), and transferred to No. 1 New Zealand Stationary Hospital; transferred to England, 4 December 1916 (trench feet), and admitted to Exeter Hospital, 5 December 1916. Transferred to No. 2 Auxiliary Hospital, 20 March 1917; discharged, 22 March 1917, on furlough, to report to No. 1 Command Depot, Perham Downs, 6 April 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 12 September 1917; rejoined 4th Bn, 25 September 1917.

Killed in action, 4 October 1917. Red Cross forwarded to Mrs Surman a statement from No. 3201 Pte A.H. Perkins, 3 January 1918: '[Bradshaw] was killed at Broodseinde Ridge on October 4th in the action. I know this because I helped to bury his body just outside the trench. He had been killed outright by shrapnel. We put a bayonet up to mark the grave which is situated right up on the ridge.I knew him well. He and I left Sydney together in the same reinforcement.'

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, BRADSHAW John

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