The AIF Project

William COOK

Regimental number7425
Place of birthWoolwich, England
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationBush worker
Addressc/o C Christison, saddler, Pingelly, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation39
Next of kinFriend, Charles Christison, saddler, Pingelly, Western Australia
Enlistment date19 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameArmy Medical Corps Sanitary Section
AWM Embarkation Roll number26/72/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A23 Suffolk on 6 December 1915
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll28th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted 19 July 1915 - taken on strength No. 1 San Sector 19 November 1915; 28th Bn 16 November 1916.
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of death or woundingMenin Road, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death40
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
112
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

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

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