The AIF Project

Pyke EVANS

Regimental number3028
Place of birthWallaroo, South Australia
SchoolMading Public School, South Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationGroom
Address31 Regent Street, Adelaide, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation22
Height5' 5"
Weight94 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs E A Evans, 31 Regent Street, Adelaide, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date10 July 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll5 July 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name7th Battalion, 10th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/24/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT RMS Osterley on 29 September 1915
Rank from Nominal RollCorporal
Unit from Nominal Roll7th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularEnlisted 15 July 1915, 7th Bn, 10th Reinforcements. Taken on strength, 7th Bn, 23 March 1916. Promoted Corporal, 27 October 1916.
FateKilled in Action 21 September 1917
Place of death or woundingMenin Road, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death23
Age at death from cemetery records24
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
50
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Elizabeth EVANS, Rowland Road, Hilton, South Australia
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Admitted to 1st Auxiliary Hospital, Cairo, 21 December 1915 (ingrown toenail); transferred to Australian and New Zealand Convalescent Depot, 17 January 1916; to 2nd Australian General Hospital, 21 January 1916 (deformed toe); to 3rd Auxiliary Hospital, 15 February 1916; discharged to duty, 13 March 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 26 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 31 March 1916.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 1 August 1916. Promoted Corporal, 27 October 1916.

Killed in action, Belgium, 21 September 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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