Regimental number | 42 |
Place of birth | Hillgrove, New South Wales |
School | Howell Public School, New South Wales |
Religion | Church of England |
Occupation | Labourer |
Address | Kearsley via West Maitland, New South Wales |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 19 |
Next of kin | Mother, Mrs Sophia Cooper, Howell via Inverell, New South Wales |
Previous military service | Served for 1 year in the 13th Infantry Regiment, Citizen Military Forces; still serving at time of AIF enlistment. |
Enlistment date | |
Place of enlistment | West Maitland, New South Wales |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 35th Battalion, A Company |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/52/1 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A24 Benalla on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 35th Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Messines, Belgium |
Age at death | 22.10 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 20 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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 | 125 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: George and Sophia COOPER, Howell, New South Wales. Native of Hillgrove, New South Wales |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Embarked from Sydney, 1 May 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 2 July 1916. Admitted to VD Hospital, Bulford, 22 July 1916; rejoined unit, 5 October 1916. Admitted to Hospital, Parkhouse, 16 November 1916; rejoined 9th Training Bn, 19 December 1916; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 26 days. Proceeded overseas to France, 16 January 1917; rejoined 35th Bn, 20 January 1917. Killed in action, 7 June 1917. Buried 'a few yards N. of La Hutte, 1 mile S. of Messines.' Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |