Regimental number | 6573 |
Place of birth | Adelaide, South Australia |
School | Le Fevres Peninsula School, Glanville, South Australia |
Religion | Church of England |
Occupation | Clerk |
Address | Clarence Park, South Australia |
Marital status | Married |
Age at embarkation | 27 |
Height | 5' 6.5" |
Weight | 133 lbs |
Next of kin | Wife, Mrs I G Hills, corner of Richmond and Goodwood Roads, Westbourne Park, South Australia |
Previous military service | Memebr for 7 years, Streaky Bay Rifle Club |
Enlistment date | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 27th Battalion, 19th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/44/5 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A28 Miltiades on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 27th Battalion |
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular | 'He left South Australia on the Troopship "Miltiades" on 24th January, 1917 reaching England on 27th March.' (details from Wife) |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Westhoek, Ypres, Belgium |
Age at death | 28.5 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 28 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
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 | 110 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: Henry and Helen HILLS; husband of Ida HILLS, Marlborough Road, Westbourne Park, South Australia |
Family/military connections | Brothers: 2377 Lance Corporal Henry Alexander HILLS, 27th Bn, returned to Australia, 24 January 1918; 2799 Pte William Edward HILLS, 16th Bn, returned to Australia, 5 March 1919. |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |
Sources | NAA: B2455, HILLS Walter George |