The AIF Project

Eric Allan CAMERON

Regimental number2125
Place of birthTaralgon, Victoria
SchoolFlinders State School, Victoria
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationLabourer
AddressBeechworth, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Next of kinMother, Mrs H Cameron, Beechworth, Victoria
Enlistment date8 July 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll8 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentSapper
Unit name3rd Field Company Engineers, Reinforcement 10
AWM Embarkation Roll number14/22/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A70 Ballarat on 6 September 1915
Regimental number from Nominal Roll595
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll5th Division Engineers
FateKilled in Action 26 September 1917
Place of death or woundingZonnebeke, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records25
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 57), 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
23
Other details

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

Miscellaneous detailsSecond given name incorrectly entered on Embarkation Roll as Allen.

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