Notes |
- From the Commonwealth War Graves Commission web site:
(http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=924103)
Casualty Details
Name: HAYS, KEITH BLACKLAND LISTER
Initials: K B L
Nationality: Australian
Rank: Sapper
Regiment/Service: Australian Engineers
Unit Text: 13th Field Coy.
Age: 22
Date of Death: 08/06/1917
Service No: 14485
Additional information: Son of Sydney Saunders Hays and Ada Hays, of Ibis, Longreach, Queensland. Native of Rockhampton.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: Panel 7.
Memorial: YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL
(http://www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?cemetery=91800&mode=1)
Extracted from the AIF web site
Keith Blaxland Lester HAYS
Regimental number: 14485
Place of birth: Banksia Station via Rockhampton, Queensland
School: State School, Longreach, Queensland
Religion: Church of England
Occupation: Drover
Address: Ibis Street, Longreach, Queensland
Marital status: Single
Age at embarkation: 22
Next of kin: Mother, Mrs Ada Frances Caroline Hays, Ibis Street, Longreach, Queensland
Previous military service: Served in the Cadets.
Enlistment date: 2 November 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll: 2 November 1915
Rank on enlistment: Sapper
Unit name: July 1916 Reinforcements
AWM Embarkation Roll number: 14/42/2
Embarkation details: Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A44 Vestalia on 11 July 1916
Rank from Nominal Roll: Private
Unit from Nominal Roll: 13th Field Company Engineers
Fate: Killed in Action 8 June 1917
Place of death or wounding: Messines, Belgium
Age at death: 23
Age at death from cemetery records: 22
Place of burial: No known grave
Commemoration details: The 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: 24
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records: Parents: Sydney and Ada HAYS, Ibis Street, Longreach, Queensland. Native of Rockhampton
Other details:
War service: Western Front
Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
|