The AIF Project

Frank DALTON

Regimental number2685
Place of birthSurrey Hills, Sydney, New South Wales
ReligionRoman Catholic
OccupationCarter
Address12 Burke Street, Zetland, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation24
Next of kinMother, Mrs Ellen Dalton, 249 Burke Street, Zetland, New South Wales
Previous military serviceServed for 3 years in the Irish Rifles, Citizen Military Forces.
Enlistment date3 October 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name37th Battalion, 5th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/54/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A24 Benalla on 9 November 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll37th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 8 June 1917
Age at death from cemetery records24
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe 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
128
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Michael and Ellen DALTON, 249 Bourke Street, Waterloo, New South Wales. Native of Sydney
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Sydney, 9 November 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 9 January 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 20 April 1917; taken on strength, 37th Bn, 25 April 1917.

Wounded in action, 7-9 June 1917; subsequently confirmed killed in action, 8 September 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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