The AIF Project

Charles Alexander DUFF

Regimental number859
Place of birthSherwood Scotland
SchoolUniversity Practising School, Victoria
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationNaval staff clerk
AddressMalvern, Melbourne, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20
Next of kinMother, Mrs Alice Laura Constance Beauchamp Duff, Elizabeth Street, Malvern, Melbourne, Victoria
Enlistment date16 May 1916
Rank on enlistmentCorporal
Unit name37th Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/54/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A34 Persic on 3 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll37th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 8 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records21
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: William T and Alice Laura Constance Beecham DUFF, 6 Orrong Road, East St Kilda, Victoria
Family/military connectionsCousins: 19922 Driver James Alexander LECKY, 8th Field Artillery Brigade, died of wounds, 14 November 1918; 6612 Driver William Mervyn LECKY, 4th Field Artillery Brigade, killed in action, 1 September 1918; Major Charles Stuart LECKY DSO, 54th Bn, returned to Australia, 10 September 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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