The AIF Project

Charles CAVE

Regimental number3065
Place of birthLiverpool, England
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
AddressLudlow, Young Street, East Malvern, Victoria
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation36
Next of kinWife, Mrs M Cave, Ludlow, Young Street, East Malvern, Victoria
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date12 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name5th Battalion, 10th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/22/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board RMS Osterley on 29 September 1915
Rank from Nominal RollLance Sergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll5th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
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
43
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Admitted to No. 1 Auxiliary Hospital, Helouan, 17 January 1916 (abcess); to Helouan Convalescent Hospital, 17 January 1916; discharged to duty, 25 January 1916. Taken on strength, 5th Bn, 22 February 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 25 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 30 March 1916.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 4 May 1916; Corporal, 4 November 1916; Lance Sergeant, 6 March 1917.

Admitted to 13th General Hospital, Boulogne, 4 April 1917 (trench fever); transferred to England, 5 April 1917, and admitted to Norfolk War Hospital. Granted furlough, 9 May 1917, to report to Command Depot, Wareham, 24 May 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 20 August 1917; rejoined unit, 26 August 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 20 September 1917. Buried about 300 yards South West of Glencorse Wood.

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

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