Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

From How We Served
 
The final resting place for; - V5746 Corporal Charles William Hockey of Guernsey in the Channel Islands, and Murrayville, Victoria, had already seen active service in the trenches of Northern France whilst serving with the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry during World War One.

With the end of hostilities in November 1918, Charles received his official discharge from the British Army and immigrated out to Australia in the years of peace that followed.

When a Second World War broke out, Charles, now employed as a laborer, again presented himself for enlistment, this time in the defense of his adopted county on the 29th of August 1940.

Accepted for fulltime service within Australia, Charles was firstly allocated to the 17th Garrison Battalion where he would see serve as a guard at the Murchison Prisoner of War Camp, before being transferred in the following year to the 13th Garrison Battalion. Charles’s service within Australia on Garrison Duty would be continuous, and by mid-1944 he had been promoted to Corporal and was taken on strength with the 50th Garrison Company.

It was whilst serving with this Unit that Charles was evacuated due to illness to the 28th Camp Hospital at Tatura, Victoria, on the 7th of September 1945.

By the following day he had been conveyed to Melbourne and was immediately sent to the 115th Australian General Hospital (Heidelberg), where he was admitted as dangerously ill on the 8th of September. Charles’s health worsened, and whilst still under hospital treatment, he finally succumbed to illness on the 17th of October 1945. Charles was aged 53 at the time of his premature death.

Following his passing, Corporal Charles Hockey a veteran of the trenches of the ‘Great War’, and who had chosen to serve Australia in a Second World War, was formally laid to rest within Springvale War Cemetery, Victoria.