Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Thomas Charles Edward GODFREY

Place of birth: Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria
School: Xavier College, Kew, Victoria
Religion: Roman Catholic
Occupation: Accountant
Address: 30 Berry Street, East Melbourne, Victoria
Marital status: Single
Age at embarkation: 24
Height: 5' 7"
Weight: 134 lbs
Next of kin: Mother, Mrs Elizabeth Amelia Godfrey, 108 Smith Street, Collingwood, Victoria

Previous military service: Served for 6 months in the ranks, 6th Infantry Regiment; 12 months, 63rd Infantry; 2.6 years commissioned, 63rd Infantry.; Served as 2nd Lt, 63rd Regt, East Melbourne.
Enlistment date: 1 May 1915
Rank on enlistment: Lieutenant
Unit name:24th Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number: 23/41/1

Embarkation details: Unit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A14 Euripides on 10 May 1915
Rank from Nominal Roll: Captain
Unit from Nominal Roll: 24th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards): Military Cross

For conspicuous gallantry and ability in command of his Comapny during the capture of portion of the Hindenburg Line, when he secured the left fank against hostile counter attacks and reorganised the garrison. - Recommendation date: 12 May 1917

Fate: Killed in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or wounding: Passchendaele, Ypres, Belgium
Commemoration details: The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), 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
101
Medals
Military Cross
'For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. During an attack upon the enemy line he secured the left flank against counter attacks, and, though blown down by a shell during the charge, remained at the head of his men, upon whom his coolness and courage had a splendid effect.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 189
Date: 8 November 1917

Family/military connections
Cousin: 5820 Pte Thomas DOLAN, 25th Bn, killed in action, 20 September 1917.
Other details
War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front