Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Gordon Public School Roll of Honour

2700 Corporal Harold Roy Holmkvist was a station overseer at Leeton, NSW when he enlisted, as a Private, at Liverpool on 19 July 1915. He was 23 years old, single and the only child of Mrs Alice Holmkvist of Russhall, Darnley Street, Gordon. His father, Harold Herman Holmkvist, had died at Russhall in 1903. In November 1915, he sailed for Egypt on HMAT Euripides, with reinforcements for the 20th Infantry Battalion.

After training in Egypt for three months, he sailed to France. The 20th Bn was fighting in the trenches of the Western Front by April 1916. The battalion took part in its first major offensive around Pozières between late July and the end of August 1916. Private Holmkvist was wounded in action on 5 August 1916, suffering a broken forearm and a gunshot wound to the elbow. He was evacuated to England and convalesced at the St James Road Hospital, Liverpool.

Only weeks after returning to his unit, Private Holmkvist was wounded again, on 3 January 1917, being shot in the face and arm. He spent nearly four months in military hospitals. He was discharged from the Ontario Military Hospital at Orpington and remained in England until the end of the war. He was appointed Acting Lance Corporal in March 1918 and passed courses on signals and the Fullerphone. In August, 1918, he married Lilian Partridge at Wilton. She gave birth to a daughter in February 1919. Corporal Holmkvist attended a course on analytical chemistry at the University of London for most of 1919, until September when he returned to Australia on the Osterley. He died in 1960 at Pinjarra, WA.