The AIF Project

James John DOIG

Regimental number3370
Place of birthMyer's Flat, Bendigo, Victoria
SchoolNorth Eaglehawk State School, Victoria
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationMill hand
AddressWest Perth, Western Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation36
Next of kinMother, Mrs M A Doig, 10 Drought Street, Bendigo, Victoria
Enlistment date26 November 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll2 November 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name5th Pioneer Battalion, Reinforcement 8
AWM Embarkation Roll number14/17/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A35 Berrima on 23 December 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll10th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularThis soldier enlisted at Perth, Western Australia, but his mother and all his friends reside in Victoria.
FateKilled in Action 8 October 1917
Place of death or woundingFrance
Age at death38
Age at death from cemetery records37
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
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Commemorated in White Hills Cemetery, Victoria. Parents: William Glen (d. 20 April 1903) and Mary Agness DOIG (d. 13 December 1917), 10 Drought Street, Bendigo, Victoria. Native of Myer's Flat, Victoria
Family/military connectionsCousins: 7063 Pte James McCONNELL, 21st Bn, killed in action, 14 April 1918; 5140 Pte Arthur McCONNELL, 59th Bn, killed in action, 27 October 1917; 6521 Pte William Edward JONES, 7th Bn, killed in action, 21 April 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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