Researched and submitted by: André van Ellinckhuyzen
The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, is one of four memorials to the missing in Flanders, and it was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, and unveiled in 1927. It is located in the town of Ypres, Belgium, and dedicated to the many thousands of British and Commonwealth servicemen who were killed there and whose graves are unknown. The memorial is located on the east side of Ypres where it marks a road out of the town, in the direction of the nearby town of Menin, that was used by Allied soldiers, during WW1, on their walk to the front line, and to an almost certain death. The huge stone walls of the Menin Gate are covered with the names of 54 896 soldiers (564 South Africans), who lost their lives in battle and whose graves are not known. A further 34 957 names are inscribed on the walls of the Tyne Cot Cemetery east of Ypres, as the already massive Menin Gate Memorial was not nearly big enough for all the names of the missing men. From October 1914 to October 1918 nearly 200 000 servicemen fell at Ypres.
Henning Willem Jacobus van der Walt, was born on Monday November 20, 1876 at Rouxville in the Orange Free State. His father was a local school teacher, Douw Gerbrand van der Walt who was born in 1856 in Burgersdorp in the Eastern Cape, and died in 1886 at Tweepan near Rouxville in the Free State. His mother was Alida Hendrina Magrieta Henning who was born in 1857, also at Burgersdorp. Henning had two brothers and three sisters.
During the Anglo Boer War, Henning served with the Vryheid Commando, and on August 1, 1901 he was captured by the British near Dundee. On November 2, 1901 he was sent by ship to the British POW camp in Shahjahanpur in the Uttar Pradesh Province in India, where he remained until after the end of the war.
After returning to Vryheid from India, Henning qualified himself as a School Teacher, and before joining up at the start of the Great War he taught at a farm school on one of the farms of his friend, Christian Lodewyk Kritzinger, named Donkerhoek, near Hlobane.
Henning served with the Vryheid Mounted Rifles, for nine months, as their Regimental Quartermaster, and thereafter with the Union Defence Force during the 1914 rebellion at the start of the Great War, and also during the German South West Africa Campaign, in that same year. On 1 November 1916, Henning joined the South African Expeditionary Force in Pretoria. He was described as being 5 foot 10 in length, weighing 168 lbs, with grey eyes, and brown hair. After receiving military training in England, Henning, for the first time, embarked in Southhampton on of April 12, 1917 and arrived in Rouen, in France on April 16, 1917. At the beginning of October 1917, Henning was back in London England on “furlough”, and it was during that time in London that he got married. At the end of November Henning was again granted furlough due to medical reasons. He returned to France at the start of April 1918, and very soon thereafter fate would take his life.
Henning married Staff Nurse Hannah Florence Diesel of the S.A.M.N.S., who was from Senekal in the Free State. They were married in London, England on October 11, 1917. Both Henning and Hannah served in France and in Belgium during the Great War, but at the time of their marriage they were temporarily based in London, and were resident at number 23 Bessborough Street.
In a letter dated Bloemfontein, October 4, 1918 and addressed to the Master of the Supreme Court in Bloemfontein, Hannah wrote that her husband was a Teacher in a school at Donkerhoek, “Vrijheid” Natal, and that he had resigned his teaching post to join the Forces going overseas, and that they got married in London on October 11, 1917 and that it was their intention to settle in Vryheid once the war was over. Hannah resigned from the military on October 20 1918.
Henning van der Walt’s closest friend was Christian Lodewyk Kritzinger from Donkerhoek, near Vryheid. Kritzinger at one time also lived at 95 President Street in Vryheid. This is the same house where Boer General Emmett once lived. Kritzinger was the owner of the farms Umkoesberg, Uitkomst, Vergelegen and Donkerhoek, near Hlobane.
Lance Corporal Henning Willem Jacobus van der Walt of the South African Infantry 2nd Regiment, was 39 years old when he joined up for the war, and he was killed in action on April 21, 1918 at the age of 41 years. His place of death was indicated as Ypres, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium, and he has an unmarked grave. His name is remembered on the Ypres Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, along with at least two other Vryheid men, namely: Private Maurice Egbert Northern, and Private William John Minott.
The names of these three men are also inscribed on the War Memorial in Vryheid, and Northern and Minott are honoured on a bronze plaque, and on a silver chalice inside the St. Peters Anglican Church in Vryheid.
After the death of her husband, Hannah never married again, and sadly she had no children of her own. She was a career Nursing Sister, and passed away on March 18, 1959 at the age of 84 years, in her home in Roselaan, at Bloemspruit, in Bloemfontein.
Ever since July 1927, and to this day, a group of buglers, without fail, stand at attention, every day at 8pm, in the Menin Gate, and sound “The Last Post”.
Lest we forget.
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