Frederick Charles SCARESBROOK

Regimental number2987
Place of birthGeraldton, Western Australia
ReligionSalvation Army
OccupationHorse driver
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation33
Height5' 4"
Weight160 lbs
Next of kinWife, Victoria May Scaresbrook, Baker Street, South Fremantle, Western Australia
Previous military serviceServed for 2.5 years in the Western Australia Volunteers.
Enlistment date23 August 1916
Place of enlistmentFremantle, Western Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name48th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A8 Argyllshire on 9 November 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll48th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, 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
147
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Fremantle, 9 November 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 10 January 1917; marched into 12th Training Bn, Codford, 11 January 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 10 April 1917; taken on strength, 48th Bn, in the field, 15 April 1917.

Admitted to 13th Australian Field Ambulance, 22 April 1917, and transferred same day to Rest Station (synovitis, knee); discharged to duty, 4 May 1917; rejoined Bn, in the field, 5 May 1917.

Reported wounded and missing, 12 October 1917.

Court of Enquiry, 8 April 1918, concluded: 'Killed in action, Belgium, 12 October 1917.'

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
Miscellaneous detailsName does not appear on Embarkation Roll.
Date of death12 October 1917
SourcesNAA: B2455, SCARESBROOK Frederick Charles