The AIF Project

William Esk FINNIMORE

Regimental number58
Place of birthEsk, Queensland
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationLabourer
AddressBoondooma Station, Wondai, Queensland
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation23
Next of kinMother, Mrs Mary Finnimore, Boondooma Station, Wondai, Queensland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date28 February 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 11
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/16/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A30 Borda on 5 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll3rd Machine Gun Battalion
FateKilled in Action 1 August 1917
Age at death from cemetery records23
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: WIlliam and Mary FINNIMORE, Wondai, Queensland. Native of Esk, Queensland
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Embarked from Sydney, 5 June 1916; disembarked Egypt. Embarked Alexandria, 12 July 1916; disembarked England.

Proceeded overseas to France, 23 November 1916.

Admitted sick to hospital, 18 December 1916; transferred to 7th General Hospital, St Omer, 19 December 1916 (mumps); transferred to Base Details, 8 January 1917; rejoined unit, 10 January 1917.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 30 March 1917.

Killed in action, 1 August 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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