William Richard Page (1891 - 1917)

Born 7 Sep 1891 in Botany, New South Wales, Australia

Husband of Roberta Priscilla (Brien) Falkner — married 1916 in Redfern, New South Wales, Australia

Descendants

Died 7 Jun 1917 at age 25 in Messines, Belgium

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William Page is an Anzac who served in World War One.

Biography

William Page was Killed in Action during World War I.

This biography was auto-generated by a GEDCOM import.^[1] It's a rough draft and needs to be edited.

Military

Regimental number 2621

Place of birth Botary, Greater Sydney, New South Wales

School Botany Public School, New South Wales

Religion Methodist

Occupation Tanner

Address 'Mimosa', Tenterden Street, Botany, Greater Sydney, New South Wales

Marital status Married

Age at embarkation 25

Next of kin Wife, Mrs Roberta Page, 'Mimosa', Tenterden Street, Botany, Greater Sydney, New South Wales

Enlistment date 18 September 1916

Rank on enlistment Private

Unit name 38th Battalion, 5th Reinforcement

AWM Embarkation Roll number 23/55/2

Embarkation details Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A24 Benalla on 9 November 1916

Rank from Nominal Roll Private

Unit from Nominal Roll 38th Battalion

see also National Archives of Australia

Burial

William has no known grave. He has a memorial panel at Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), 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.

Sources

1. ↑ Page-5725 was created by Mark Ryan through the import of gilbert3.ged on Sep 28, 2015. This comment and citation can be deleted after the biography has been edited and primary sources are included.

• Source: S3591 Title: ancestry
• Australian Royalty