The AIF Project

Walter George HILLS

Regimental number6573
Place of birthAdelaide, South Australia
SchoolLe Fevres Peninsula School, Glanville, South Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationClerk
AddressClarence Park, South Australia
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation27
Height5' 6.5"
Weight133 lbs
Next of kinWife, Mrs I G Hills, corner of Richmond and Goodwood Roads, Westbourne Park, South Australia
Previous military serviceMemebr for 7 years, Streaky Bay Rifle Club
Enlistment date7 August 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name27th Battalion, 19th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/44/5
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A28 Miltiades on 24 January 1917
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll27th 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)
FateKilled in Action 28 October 1917
Place of death or woundingWesthoek, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death28.5
Age at death from cemetery records28
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe 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 connectionsBrothers: 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
SourcesNAA: B2455, HILLS Walter George

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