Place of birth | Parkes, New South Wales |
School | Cleveland Street and Newtown Public School, New South Wales |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Occupation | Teacher |
Address | Lowes Street, East Maitland, New South Wales |
Marital status | Married |
Age at embarkation | 41 |
Height | 5' 7.5" |
Weight | 140 lbs |
Next of kin | Wife, Mrs Mina Burges, Lowes Street, East Maitland, New South Wales |
Previous military service | Captain, Senior Cadet Force (East Maitland High School); OC 14th Bn, Senior Cadets. |
Enlistment date | |
Place of enlistment | Liverpool, New South Wales |
Rank on enlistment | 2nd Lieutenant |
Unit name | 34th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/51/2 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A72 Beltana on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Lieutenant |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 34th Battalion |
Recommendations (Medals and Awards) |
Mention in Despatches Not awarded. Recommendation date: |
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular | Captained the Winning Company, Senior Cadets (East Maitland High School, where he was French Master), in the Brigade Championship, 1911-12, 1912-13. |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Passchendaele, Ypres, Belgium |
Age at death | 43 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 43 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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 | 123 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: Richard and Margaret BURGESS; husband of Mina BURGESS, 19 Wetherell Street, Croydon, New South Wales. Native of Parkes, New South Wales |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Embarked Sydney, 25 November 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 29 January 1917. Marched in to 9th Training Bn, 6 March 1917. Proceeded overseas ro France, 24 August 1917; taken on strength, 34th Bn, in the field, 31 August 1917. Detached to Gas School, 8 September 1917; rejoined Bn, in the field, 17 September 1917. Killed in action, Belgiu, 12 October 1917. Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |
Miscellaneous details | Surname incorrectly entered on Embarkation Roll as BURGESS; wife's address incorrectly entered as Rose Street. |
Sources | NAA: B2455, BURGES James Clement |