The AIF Project

John Ernest CHAPMAN

Regimental number1974
Place of birthEmmaville, New South Wales
SchoolHillgrove, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationMiner
AddressBismuth Mine, Torrington, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation36
Height5' 9.75"
Weight168 lbs
Next of kinFoster Mother, Mrs Martha Murgabroid, c/o Mr J J Green, 'Looklee', Martindale Street, Wallsend, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date31 March 1916
Place of enlistmentTorrington, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name33rd Battalion, 2nd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/50/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A15 Port Sydney on 4 September 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll33rd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death37.7
Age at death from cemetery records37
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
121
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parent: John CHAPMAN. Native of Emmaville, New South Wales
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 4 September 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 29 October 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 20 December 1916.

Found guilty, 3rd Australian Division Base Depot, Etaples, 25 January 1917, of being absent without leave in that he when ordered to entrain at 0853 absented himself till 1200: awarded 6 days' Field Punishment No 2.

Marched out to unit, 2 February 1917; taken on strength, 33rd Bn, in the field, 4 February 1917.

Killed in action, 7 June 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, CHAPMAN John Ernest

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