Robert FLEMING

Regimental number237
Place of birthWhitburn, England
SchoolKing Street School, Port Glasgow, Scotland
Other trainingNil
Age on arrival in Australia33
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationButcher
AddressBrisbane, Queensland
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation33
Next of kinWife, Mrs M Fleming, 9 Helen Street, Grenoch, Scotland
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date20 December 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit nameMachine Gun Company 3, Reinforcement 2
AWM Embarkation Roll number24/8/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board RMS Mooltan on 12 April 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll3rd Machine Gun Company
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularRoll of Honour circular gives Ben Hoar, Scotland, as place of birth.
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of death or woundingNonne Bosschen
Age at death41
Age at death from cemetery records41
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: Robert and Janet Waugh FLEMING; husband of Matilda FLEMING, 2 Mary Street, Port Glasgow, Scotland. Native of Fauldhouse, Scotland
Other details

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Disembarked Suez, 14 May 1916. Embarked from Alexandria, 29 May 1916; disembarked Plymouth, 11 June 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 14 November 1916; taken on strength, 3rd Machine Gun Company, 7 May 1917.

Wounded in action, 7 May 917 (gun shot wound, right leg); rejoined unit, 23 June 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 20 September 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal