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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

47th Battalion AIF


Craig Deayton

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  • 11 months later...

Apologies for the thread necromancy but I was wondering what exactly was happening on 7/06/1917?

A distant great-uncle, Christan Jessen (2456) of the 47th was killed on that date and was noted as being buried 450 yards east of Messines.

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The battle of Messines was happening on that day. You should be able to get the War diaries from the AWM site.

Michelle 

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Hi Kristof and welcome to the forum.  As Michelle says, first visit https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/awm-media/collection/RCDIG1006477/bundled/RCDIG1006477.pdf.  

 

Unit war diaries give a detailed hand-written daily description but I would start at the summary of the action, at page 49.  This is very readable and there are some good maps on pages 52 and 54.

 

It is unusual for a unit war diary to list private soldiers, but there is a 4 page list of casualties and I saw his name listed as Pte. Jensen, C.J. on page 67.

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Regimental number 2456
Place of birth Gympie, Queensland
Place of birth Wooroolin, Queensland
Religion Church of England
Occupation Farmer
Address Wooroolin, Queensland
Marital status Married
Age at embarkation 24
Next of kin Wife, Mrs Nellie Jessen, Booyal, Isis Branch, Queensland
Enlistment date 22 April 1916
Rank on enlistment Private
Unit name 52nd Battalion, 5th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number 23/69/3
Embarkation details Unit embarked from Brisbane, Queensland, on board HMAT A49 Seang Choon on 19 September 1916
Rank from Nominal Roll Private
Unit from Nominal Roll 47th Battalion
Fate Killed in Action 7 June 1917
Place of death or wounding Messines, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records 25
Place of burial No known grave
Commemoration details The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 27), 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
143
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Son of Andrew and Fredericka Egedius Jessen. Husband of Nellie Jessen of Wooroolin, Queensland
Other details

War service: Western Front

 

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

 

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