The AIF Project

Victor CHRISTENSEN

Regimental number4769
Place of birthTiaro Queensland
SchoolLaro State School, Queensland
Other trainingEngineer
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationTurner
AddressTiaro, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinFather, P Christensen, Tiaro, Queensland
Previous military serviceServed in the Cadets.
Enlistment date30 September 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll13 September 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name15th Battalion, 15th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/32/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A73 Commonwealth on 28 March 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll42nd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 31 July 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Date of death31 July 1917
Age at death22
Age at death from cemetery records22
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
135
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Paul and Ernestine CHRISTENSEN, Tiaro, Queensland
Family/military connectionsSister: Staff Nurse Victoria Dorothy CHRISTENSEN, Australian Army Nursing Service, returned to Australia, 12 March 1918.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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