The AIF Project

Arthur Herbert HABERLE

Regimental number6567
Place of birthUlverstone, Tasmania
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
AddressPenguin, Tasmania
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Next of kinFather, Mr C Haberl, Riana, Tasmania
Previous military serviceNil (exempt area under Compulsory Military Training Scheme)
Enlistment date22 August 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name12th Battalion, 21st Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/29/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A17 Port Lincoln on 20 October 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll12th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 3 November 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), 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
66
Family/military connectionsBrother: 1078 Pte Charles Henry HABERLE, 25th Bn, returned to Australia, 31 August 1915.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Melbourne, 20 October 1916; transferred to HT A11 'Ascanius', at Sierra Leone, 4 December 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 28 December 1916.

Marched into 3rd Training Bn, Durrington, 29 December 1916. Admitted to Parkhouse Hospital, 11 February 1917 (mumps); discharged to duty, 3 March 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 5 April 1917; taken on strength, 12th Bn, 13 April 1917.

Found guilty of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline (using obscene language on parade, 23 June 1917): awarded 120 hours' Field Punishment No. 2.

Killed in action, Belgium, 3 November 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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