The AIF Project

Henry Gault PHEE

Regimental number872
Place of birthStirlingshire, Scotland
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationFitter
AddressWolombi Road, Cessnock, New South Wales
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation27
Next of kinWife, Mrs Agnes Phee, Wollombi Road, Cessnock, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date22 January 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name34th Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/51/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A20 Hororata on 2 May 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll34th Battalion
FateKilled in Action 19 July 1917
Date of death19 July 1917
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
124
Family/military connectionsBrother: 1207 Corporal William Wallace PHEE, 34th Bn, killed in action, 6 June 1917.
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked from Sydney, 2 May 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 23 June 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 21 November 1916.

Admitted to 7th General Hospital, St Omer, 19 December 1916 (mumps); rejoined unit, 18 January 1916.

Detached for duty, 9th Field Company Engineers, 19 January 1917; rejoined unit from detachment, 28 February 1917.

Killed in action, 19 July 1917.

Buried in a shell hole a few yards to the left of Chapelle du Voleur, Messines, Belgium. Grave lost in subsequent fighting.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

Print format    


© The AIF Project 2024, UNSW Canberra. Not to be reproduced without permission.