The AIF Project

Harold John ANNAND

Regimental number2614
Place of birthJoyces Creek, Victoria
SchoolState
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationLabourer
AddressCotswold, Majorca, Victoria
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation28
Next of kinWife, Mrs Hazel Annand, Cotswold, Majorca, Victoria
Enlistment date11 March 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll10 May 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name46th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/63/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A17 Port Lincoln on 20 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollLance Corporal
Unit from Nominal Roll46th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularVolunteered to carry ammunition to front line, was in charge of 25 men also volunteers. Last seen of him by mates he was lying dead in a shell hole. (Wife)
FateKilled in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death28
Age at death from cemetery records28
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
141
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: George and Janet ANNAND; husband of Hazel ANNAND, 'Annerlea', Palmerston Street, Maryborough, Victoria. Native of Joyce's Creek, Victoria~
Family/military connectionsBrother: 6457 Pte George ANNAND, 7th Bn, returned to service, 18 October 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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