The AIF Project

Victor Thomas HUCKEL

Regimental number6023
Place of birthPullabooka, New South Wales
SchoolPublic School
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarmer
AddressRocky Ridge, Grenfell, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation21
Next of kinFather, Mr H Huckel, Rocky Ridge, Grenfell, New South Wales
Enlistment date24 February 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name4th Battalion, 19th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/21/4
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A18 Wiltshire on 22 August 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll4th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 4 October 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, Ypres, Belgium
Age at death22.11
Age at death from cemetery records22
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
40
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Henry and Elizabeth HUCKEL, Rocky Ridge, Grenfell, New South Wales
Family/military connectionsCousins
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Sydney, 11 August 1916; disembarked Plymouth, 12 October 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 13 December 1916.

Wounded in action, Belgium, and declared missing in action, 4 October 1917; subsequently declared killed in action.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Father requested following inscription: 'He answered the call of his country /But the voice of the cable tells /That a dauntless lad in a khaki suit /In the awful battle fell. /We mourn his loss but his actions /Sweet balm to his loved ones bring /For he's ever a hero, the man who dies /For his Country, God and King.'

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