The AIF Project

Ernest William BEER

Regimental number2515
Date of birth4 November 1881
Place of birthDublin, South Australia
SchoolClinton Public School, South Australia
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationFarm labourer
AddressBute, South Australia
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation35
Height5' 7.5"
Weight140 lbs
Next of kinWife, Mrs Florence Eleanor Beer, Bute, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date3 April 1916
Place of enlistmentKadina, South Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name50th Battalion, 5th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/67/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A73 Commonwealth on 21 September 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll27th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularWorked on the farm and road works (details from Wife)
FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Place of death or woundingPolygon Wood, France
Age at death35.5
Age at death from cemetery records36
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), Belgium

The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave.

The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936.

Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.

Panel number, Roll of Honour,
  Australian War Memorial
109
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Mary Ann Hutchinson (formerly BEER), and the late William Ernest BEER, husband of Mrs F.E. BEER, Milner Street, West Hilton, South Australia. Native of South Australia~
Family/military connectionsStepbrother who served and returned to Australia
Other details

War service: Western Front

Wounded in action, Bullecourt, 3 May 1917; invalided to hospital; returned to duty, June 1917.

Killed in action, Polygon Wood, Belgium, 20 September 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, BEER Ernest William

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