The AIF Project

James Clement BURGES

Place of birthParkes, New South Wales
SchoolCleveland Street and Newtown Public School, New South Wales
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationTeacher
AddressLowes Street, East Maitland, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation41
Height5' 7.5"
Weight140 lbs
Next of kinWife, Mrs Mina Burges, Lowes Street, East Maitland, New South Wales
Previous military serviceCaptain, Senior Cadet Force (East Maitland High School); OC 14th Bn, Senior Cadets.
Enlistment date25 July 1916
Place of enlistmentLiverpool, New South Wales
Rank on enlistment2nd Lieutenant
Unit name34th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/51/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A72 Beltana on 25 November 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll34th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Mention in Despatches


Not awarded.
Recommendation date: 12 October 1917

Other details from Roll of Honour CircularCaptained the Winning Company, Senior Cadets (East Maitland High School, where he was French Master), in the Brigade Championship, 1911-12, 1912-13.
FateKilled in Action 12/10/1017
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death43
Age at death from cemetery records43
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe 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 detailsSurname incorrectly entered on Embarkation Roll as BURGESS; wife's address incorrectly entered as Rose Street.
SourcesNAA: B2455, BURGES James Clement

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