The AIF Project

Charles Sylvester ELLIS

Regimental number3229
Place of birthQuorn, South Australia
SchoolState School
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
AddressOodnadatta, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Height5' 7.5"
Weight143 lbs
Next of kinFather, Charles E Ellis, 236 Mile, East and West Railway via Port Augusta, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil (exempt area under Compulsory Military Training scheme).
Enlistment date29 March 1916
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll29 March 1916
Place of enlistmentAdelaide, South Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name32nd Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/49/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A57 Malakuta on 27 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll32nd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 23 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPasschendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death19.7
Age at death from cemetery records19
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
120
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Charles Edward and Jane ELLIS. Native of Quorn, South Australia
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Adelaide, 27 June 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 22 August 1916; mrched in to 8th Training Bn, Larkhill, 24 August 1916.

Admitted sick to Fovant Hospital, 27 December 1916 (mumps); discharged, 1 January 1917 (no further details recorded).

Proceeded overseas to France, 25 June 1917; taken on strength, 32nd Bn, in the field, 19 July 1917.

Killed in action, 13 October 1917.

Handwritten notation on Form B103: 'Buried'.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, ELLIS Charles Sylvester

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