The AIF Project

Winton DALEY

Regimental number2912
Place of birthMoree, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationStation hand
AddressGarah, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation25
Next of kinMother, Mrs S Dugin, Garah, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil. Attestation paper completed by DALEY stated: 'Previously rejected: "Too much smoking".'
Enlistment date27 October 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name46th Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/63/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board SS Port Napier on 17 November 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll46th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 1 October 1917
Age at death from cemetery records26
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: Thomas and Laura DALEY. Native of Moree, New South Wales
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Sydney, 17 November 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 29 January 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 4 June 1917; taken on strength, 46th Bn, 21 June 1917.

Killed in action, 1 October 1917

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Sister, Mrs M. Dugan, wrote to Base Records, 20 May 1921: 'His father is still licing but I do not know his whereabouts. He left his home and family when that son was seven years of age. I think that should be a good and sufficient reason for his not not getting a war medal.' Officer Commanding, Base Records, noted on the letter, 31 May 1921: 'War medals etc to mother'.

Print format    


© The AIF Project 2024, UNSW Canberra. Not to be reproduced without permission.