The AIF Project

Herbert Clarence HILLS

Regimental number3754
Place of birthTingha, New South Wales
SchoolSuperior Public School, Paddington, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationCar cleaner
Address19 Forbes Street, Paddington, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinMother, Mrs A Hills, 19 Forbes Street, Paddington, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date11 August 1915
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name1st Battalion, 12th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/18/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT Mooltan on 11 December 1915
Rank from Nominal RollSergeant
Unit from Nominal Roll1st Battalion
FateKilled in Action 7 November 1917
Age at death23
Age at death from cemetery records23
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), 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
29
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Johnothan and Annie HILLS, 44 Heeley Street, Paddington, New South Wales
Family/military connectionsCousin: 556 Bombardier Vivian Clyde FLETCHER MM, 4th Trench Mortar Battery, returned to Australia, 17 june 1918.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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