Compressed fibre Identity discs: Private Henry McIntosh Hopping Mills, 9th Machine Gun Company, AIF

Pair of compressed fibe identity discs, one red circular and one green joined together by a short piece of string. Both are impressed on one side only 'H MILLS / 554 / 9 MGC / PRES / AIF'.

Born in Sydney, New South Wales in 1894, Henry McIntosh Hopping 'Tibby' Mills was employed as a carpenter and joiner when he enlisted in the AIF on 10 October 1916, using the name 'Henry Mills'. Posted as a private to the 8th Reinforcements to the 9th Machine Gun Company, service number 554, Mills trained in Seymour, Victoria before embarking for overseas service from Melbourne aboard RMS Osterley on 14 February 1917.

Mills arrived in England in April, where he undertook further training, finally joining his unit in France at the end of August. He took part in fighting at Zonnebeke and Passchendaele in Belgium, during the third battle of Ypres but was evacuated to hospital in England, suffering from trench fever, at the end of October. While recuperating there the machine gun companies were amalgamated into five battalions, one for each Australian Division. The 9th Company became part of the 3rd Machine Gun Battalion, and Mills returned to this unit in France in April 1918.

Mills was killed by two machine gun bullets to the head, near Accroche Wood outside Hamel, early in the morning of 8 August when the advance of the 9th Company was held up by two German machine gun nests. Although some witnesses to his death were sure that he had been buried and a cross erected over his grave, others stated that his body had been placed on top of a trench before following orders to advance without waiting with the wounded or dead. Mills' body was not recovered after the war and his name is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial.

At the time of his death Mills would not yet have received the news that his father, his nominated next of kin, had died a month earlier. His mother, Jessie, received these discs, which had been left in his kit, after the war. At the time of his death Mills would have been wearing a new set of discs giving his unit as the 3rd Machine Gun Battalion.