The AIF Project

Andrew Campbell Ernest ATKINSON

Regimental number1
Place of birthMoree, New South Wales
SchoolWilcannia and Deniliquin Public Schools, New South Wales
ReligionMethodist
OccupationClerk
AddressCommonwealth Bank of Australia, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Height5' 8"
Weight135 lbs
Next of kinFather, John Atkinson, George Street, Deniliquin, New South Wales
Previous military service17th Infantry; Colour Sergeant of Cadets in Deniliquin and Corporal in Citizen Military Forces in Deniliquin and Sydney.
Enlistment date20 March 1916
Place of enlistmentSydney, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 9
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/14/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A24 Benalla on 1 May 1916
Rank from Nominal Roll2nd Lieutenant
Unit from Nominal Roll9th Machine Gun Company
FateKilled in Action 13 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death22
Age at death from cemetery records22
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 31), 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
177
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: John and Margaret Hedrick ATKINSON, Paringa, Deniliquin, New South Wales
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, ATKINSON Andrew Campbell Ernest

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