COLLINS, Cecil Claude Clifton
| Service Number: | 2300 |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | 29 March 1916 |
| Last Rank: | Private |
| Last Unit: | 38th Infantry Battalion |
| Born: | Woorak, Victoria, Australia, 3 December 1897 |
| Home Town: | Kiata, Hindmarsh, Victoria |
| Schooling: | Kiata State School, Victoria, Australia |
| Occupation: | Telephonist |
| Died: | Killed in Action, Belgium, 7 June 1917, aged 19 years |
| Cemetery: |
No known grave - "Known Unto God" Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Flanders, Belgium |
| Memorials: | Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, Hawthorn Postmaster General's Department Victoria 1, Menin Gate Memorial (Commonwealth Memorial to the Missing of the Ypres Salient), Postmaster General's Department Victoria 2 |
World War 1 Service
| 29 Mar 1916: | Enlisted AIF WW1, Private, 2300, 38th Infantry Battalion | |
|---|---|---|
| 20 Oct 1916: | Involvement Private, 2300, 38th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '18' embarkation_place: Melbourne embarkation_ship: HMAT Port Lincoln embarkation_ship_number: A17 public_note: '' | |
| 20 Oct 1916: | Embarked Private, 2300, 38th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Port Lincoln, Melbourne |
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Add my storyBiography contributed by Chris Buckley
Private Cecil Claude Clifton Collins (Service No:2300) enlisted in the AIF on 29 March 1916 and was attached to 38th Infantry Battalion on 20 October 1916 when his Unit embarked from Melbourne for Portsmouth via Sierra Leone on board HMAT A17 Port Lincoln. Private Collins was KiA in the Battle of Messines between 8/9 June 1917 and has no known grave.
Born in Woorak nr Nhill, Victoria in 1897, Cecil was second of five children of Henry Collins (b1868 in Mt Gambier, South Australia) and Elizabeth Dickinson (b1871 at Murphy's Creek in Victoria). Henry was a Storekeeper at Kiata via Nhill, Victoria in 1895 when he and Elizabeth married. They lived in Woorak and Kiata where they raised their family and Henry was a Storekeeper. Elizabeth died in 1912, and Henry remarried - in 1913 to Bertha Louise Devlin (nee Holland; b1878 in Millicent, South Australia) and following her death in 1937, to Florence Marion Facey (b1890 in Cranborne, Victoria) - Florence was working at Portland Hospital as a Nurse in 1938 when she and Henry married.
Cecil lived in Kiata via Nhill where he was a member of the Senior Cadets and Citizens' Military Force, and started work as a Telegraph Messenger at Nhill Post Office in 1913. By 1916 he was a Telephonist at the Melbourne GPO when he enlisted in the AIF. Cecil's effects, returned to his father, were a wallet, badge, packet of needles, cards and photo. His father had requested from the Army a map to help him better understand where Cecil was killed, but was refused on the basis that maps were only available for official purposes (NAA). The Nhill Free Press (Trove; 3 July 1917) reported that 'The Kiata School flag, and the flags in Nhill, were flying at half-mast on Friday as a token of respect'.
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