The AIF Project

Albert James COOMBS

Regimental number1635
Place of birthBendigo, Victoria
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationBank clerk
Address160 Edward Street, East Perth, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinFather, William Coombs, 160 Edward Street, East Perth, Western Australia
Previous military service22nd Australian Army Medical Corps
Enlistment date24 January 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll15 February 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name44th Battalion, 1st Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/61/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A29 Suevic on 6 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll44th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted 15 February 1916 - 44th Bn 1st reinforcements; taken on strength 44th Bn, 13 October 1916.
FateKilled in Action 9 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death21
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
137
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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