Joseph HIBBERT

Regimental number1712
Place of birthBellarine, Victoria
SchoolState School, Bellarine, Victoria
ReligionMethodist
OccupationFarmer
AddressEast Bellarine, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation18
Next of kinFather, James Hibbert, Bellarine via Geelong, Victoria
Previous military serviceServed in the 69th Infantry (Compulsory Military Training scheme).
Enlistment date6 December 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name46th Battalion, 2nd Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/63/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A14 Euripides on 4 April 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll46th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 8 June 1917
Place of death or woundingMessines, Belgium
Age at death from cemetery records19
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe 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
141
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: James and Phoebe HIBBERT, Bellarine, Victoria
Family/military connectionsCousins: 2850 Pte Samuel Cecil Stanley HIBBERT, 7th Bn, died of wounds, 5 October 1917; 706 Lance Corporal Albert George HIBBERT, 31st Bn, killed in action, 21 July 1916; 1084 Pte Frank Ernest HIBBERT, 30th Bn, returned to Australia, 15 April 1919; 562 Pte James Edmond HIBBERT, 24th Bn, returned to Australia, 20 May 1919; 2850 Pte Samuel Cecil Stanley HIBBERT, 7th Bn, died of wounds, 5 October 1917; 12 other cousins.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal