Private Henry Holt
25th Battalion, AIF
Service number: 2246
Born: 1886, Grafton, NSW
Died: 2 August 1916, Pozieres, France
Henry Holt was born in 1886 in Grafton, the only child of Alfred and Catherine Holt. After school, he was apprenticed to his father as a painter. In 1910 he married Phoebe Wogaman in Sydney and they had three children. Their last child Margaret, he would never see as she was born in Penrith on 26 January 1916. Alice was living in Lethbridge Street Penrith at the time. Holt served in the Lismore Scots Rifles before his enlistment in July 1915 in Brisbane, where the family were living at the time.
Holt embarked from Brisbane on the HMAT Armadale on 18 September 1915. He was sent immediately to Gallipoli, remaining there until December 1915. He was sent to France in March 1916. The following month he was ill and admitted to hospital at Havre and discharged for duty on 17 June. Holt died on 2 August 1916 at No. 3 Casualty Clearing Station three days after receiving gunshot wounds to the face and abdomen on 29 July 1916.
By October 1916 Holt’s wife and family were living in Henry Street, and later High Street Penrith. Phoebe wrote to the government in May 1917 expressing her disappointment that his diary and photos were not among his belongings sent to her. In 1919, Phoebe again wrote to the government seeking clarification as to her husband’s burial place. She thought confusion had arisen because two of his cousins were in his battalion, one with the same initials and one wounded on the same day. She wanted confirmation of her husband’s burial place.
By 1920 Phoebe had moved to Artarmon where she states in a letter to the government, ‘I have a cottage built by volunteer workers. It is a dear little home’. Phoebe Holt died aged 82 years at Manly.
Memorial Details:
- Puchevillers British Cemetery, France
- Honor Roll, Lismore War Memorial
Sources: