The AIF Project

Carl Hjalmar ARRING

Regimental number5030
Place of birthStockholm, Sweden
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationLabourer
AddressPort Pirie, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation38
Height5' 11"
Weight170 lbs
Next of kinFriend, P Persse, Port Pirie West, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date17 December 1915
Place of enlistmentAdelaide, South Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name10th Battalion, 16th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/27/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A9 Shropshire on 25 March 1916
Regimental number from Nominal Roll5030
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll10th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 October 1917
Place of death or woundingFlanders
Age at death39
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
58
Other details

War service: Western Front

Proceeded overseas to France from England, 15 August 1916; taken on strength, 10th Bn, 25 August 1916.

Admitted to 3rd Casualty Clearing Station, 10 May 1917 (boil, neck); transferred to 18th General Hospital, Camiers, 14 May 1917; to England, 17 May 1917, and admitted to Kitchener's Military Hospital; transferred to 3rd Auxiliary Hospital, Dartford, 29 May 1917; discharged to furlough, 18 June 1917, to report to No. 1 Command Depot, Perham Downs, 2 July 1917.

Admitted to 1st Australian Dermatological Hospital, 3 July 1917; discharged, 13 July 1917 (not venereal disease).

Proceeded overseas to France, 25 August 1917; rejoined 10th Bn, 7 September 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 7 October 1917.

Buried by 1st Anzac Corps; grave subsequently lost.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, ARRING Carl Hjalmar

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