Albert Roy Harbeck
Service No. 123, Sergeant, 39th Battalion

The twenty-three year old son of Peter and Fanny Miriam Harbeck, Roy enlisted on 21 February 1916 and embarked aboard HMAT Ascanius on 27 May 1916. During training in England, Roy was promoted to Corporal. Deployed to the Western Front with the 39th Infantry Battalion, he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant on 17 January 1917.

On 14 February 1917 Roy was wounded in action, but remained on duty. Before dawn on 30 April he was again wounded, struck by a shell, during a German attack on the Australian line at Ploegsteert Wood, opposite Messines. Suffering a fractured jaw and an injury to the brain, Sergeant Harbeck was carried to the Casualty Clearing Station but died soon after.

The inscription on his headstone at the Strand Military Cemetery in Ploegsteert reads ‘Greater love hath no man than this’.
Roy Harbeck is remembered on the Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour and the Lakes Entrance Cenotaph.