The AIF Project

John William BREWITT

Regimental number3081
Place of birthRadcliffe-on-Trent, England
Place of birthNottinghamshire, England
SchoolChurch School, England
Age on arrival in Australia17
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinFather, J W Brewitt, Home Lane, near Radcliff on Trent, Nottinghamshire, England
Previous military serviceServed in the 8th Sherwood Foresters, Nottinghamshire Regiment, Territorial Force, England.
Enlistment date8 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name6th Battalion, 10th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/23/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT RMS Osterley on 29 September 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll6th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of death or woundingFrance
Age at death22
Age at death from cemetery records22
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
46
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: James and Elizabeth BREWITT, Saxondale, Bingham, Notts, England. Native of Holme Lane, Radcliffe, Manchester, England
Other details

War service: taken on strength, 6th Bn, Tel el Kebir, 7 January 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 26 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 2 April 1916.

Wounded in action, 25 July 1916 (gun shot wound, left shoulder); admitted to No. 1 Canadian General Hospital, Etaples, 26 July 1916; discharged to Base Depot, 7 August 1916.

Killed in action, 20 September 1917.

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

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