Cudgegong Valley History Project

Lieutenant Horace Owen Marks Death Date 29 October 1916 Death Place France Final Rank Lieutenant Service British Army Unit C Battery 110th Brigade Royal Field Artillery Place France Conflict/Operation First World War, 1914-1918

Another Mudgee Hero LIEUTENANT HORACE OWEN MARKS. A painful sensation was created in Mudgee when it became known on Saturday morning that Lieut. Horace Owen Marks, son of Mrs. and the late Mr. T. H. Marks, had fallen in action in France. The heroic young soldier was a Mudgee boy, in the full sense that he was born in the town and spent his boyhood and his early manhood in it. The young soldier fell on October 25, but no news of the circumstances attending his death have, of course, yet been received. Lieut. Horace Owen Marks was born at Mudgee, on June 19, 1899. After some time spent at the Sydney University, he went to Edinburgh and entered himself as a medical student at the University of that city. At the outbreak of war he promptly joined the Officers' Training Corps of his University; and applied for a commission in the Imperial Army. In September, 1914, he was gazetted as Second Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery, and thereafter spent a year training in England with his battery, which arrived in France in time to take part in the battle of Loos, in which Lieut. Marks was slightly wounded. From the time of the battle of Loos to the time of his death, Lieut. Marks was in constant active service in the most important of the operations on the western front, and in common with all his comrades, was very proud of the fact that his battery was the chief artillery support of the Australians in their brilliantly successful attack on Pozieres. On the Western front he was promoted to a full lieutenant, and looked forward to being Promoted to the rank of captain. His letters to his mother came to hand with unfailing regularity. On Thursday Mrs. Marks received a very cheerful letter, which was the longest he had been able to write for some time. On Friday she received from the Imperial War Office a cablegram announcing her son’s death. The deceased officer was a fine, smart young man, who had a most promising career opening before him, and was very popular in Mudgee and district, in which he had hosts of friends. The greatest sorrow was felt when it became known that he, following the example of so many of his district companions, had paid the great price of his patriotism. The greatest sympathy, with which the 'Guardian' very, sincerely associates itself, is felt for the sorely bereaved mother and family. Mrs. Marks has another son at the front, Lieut. F. H. Marks, who gave up a fine dentistry practice at Gulgong, to throw in his lot with those who are fighting the battles of the Empire. He also is on active service “somewhere in France”. Mudgee Guardian, Monday 6 November 1916, p. 2. Obituary Horace Marks