Next of kin plaque: Sapper Herbert Walter Scholes, 3rd Tunnelling Company, AIF

Bronze next of kin plaque, showing on the obverse, Britannia holding a laurel wreath, the British lion, dolphins, a spray of oak leaves and the words 'HE DIED FOR FREEDOM AND HONOUR' around the edge. Beneath the main figures, the British lion defeats the German eagle. The initials 'ECP', for the designer Edward Carter Preston appear above the lion's right forepaw. A raised rectangle above the lion's head bears the name 'HUBERT [Sic] WALTER SCHOLES'.

Born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1878, Herbert Walter Scholes was employed as a miner at Queenstown when he enlisted in the AIF at Claremont, near Hobart on 26 September 1915. He named his next of kin as his wife, Ellen 'Nellie' Jean Scholes, and noted that he had four children.

Posted as a sapper, service number 1171, to No. 3 Company, Mining Corps (later called the 3rd Tunnelling Company), Scholes travelled to Sydney or training, where he embarked for overseas service aboard HMAT A38 Ulysses on 20 February 1916. After stopping briefly in Egypt he arrived in France on 5 May and joined his unit at Hazebrouck three days later. Scholes was slightly wounded near Hill 70 on 8 September 1917 but elected to remain on duty. He was severely wounded on 16 March 1918, according to his unit's war diary when he was noted as the only man wounded on that day, or on 17 March according to his service record, receiving shrapnel wounds to his head and face and a fractured arm. He was treated at the 35th (British) Field Ambulance before being moved to the 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station on 18 March. He died there the same day, aged 40. Scholes is buried in the Hersin Communal Cemetery Extension.

In 1917 army authorities were contacted by Mrs Margaret Caroline Scholes who wished to claim an allotment from her husband. Enquiries revealed that Scholes had married her in New South Wales in 1908 but she had left him after two months. He had bigamously married a widow, Ellen Jean Mancey in Launceston in 1911. Of the four children listed on Scholes' enlistment papers the first had been adopted Ellen, the next two children were her's by her first husband, and the fourth appears to have been adopted by Ellen and Herbert. All had adopted the surname Scholes. The army eventually awarded Herbert's allotment, unclaimed pay and war gratuity to Ellen Scholes and the children on the grounds that the first Mrs Scholes had failed to claim financial support from her husband since 1908. This memorial plaque, together with Scholes' campaign medals, were issued to Ellen to be held in trust for the eldest boy, John Richard Scholes.