Regimental number | 3128 |
Place of birth | Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England |
Age on arrival in Australia | 25 |
Religion | Church of England |
Occupation | Turner |
Address | SA |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 29 |
Next of kin | Mother, Mrs Mary Halkyard, 43 Guildford Road, Levenshulme, Manchester, England |
Previous military service | Nil |
Enlistment date | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 54th Battalion, 8th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/71/4 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A29 Suevic on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 54th Battalion |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Glencorse Wood, Ypres, Belgium |
Age at death | 30 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 29 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), 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 | 159 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: J. and Mary HALKYARD, 55 Park Road, Tame Valley, Dukinfield, Cheshire, England. Native of Huddersfield |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Embarked from Sydney, 11 November 1916; disembarked Devonport, England, 30 January 1917. Found guilty, 27 March 1917, of being absent without leave, 23-24 March 1917: awarded 4 days' Field Punishment No. 2 and forfeiture of 8 days' pay. Proceeded overseas to France, 25 April 1917, taken on strength, 54th Bn, 13 May 1917. Admitted to 8th Australian Field Ambulance, 2 June 1917 (eye examination); transferred to 3rd Canadian Stationary Hospital, 4 June 1917; rejoined unit, 13 June 1917. Admitted to 3rd Canadian Stationary Hospital, 30 July 1917 (otitis media); rejoined unit, 31 August 1917. Killed in action, 26 September 1917. Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |