Description

Offered is a British War Medal (1914 – 18) impressed named 6128 PTE. E.S. LEWIS 9 -BN. AI.F.  Medal comes with copies service record & research.

Ernest Sylvester Lewis, shop assistant, age 21, born at Rockhampton, Qld. Enlisted 20/1/1916 at Toowoomba, Qld. Embarked 8/8/1916; to France and to 9 Bn 6/3/1917; W.I.A. 20/9/1917 shrapnel wounds to both legs, at Zillbeke, Belgium when the unit was caught in an enemy barrage which killed all its company commanders, half its junior officers and many men; to hospital and amputated right thigh as leg had been blown away. Returned to Australia 8/4/1918 & discharged 30/7/918 Medically Unfit.

Sadly, 20 years late, a newspaper article states:

Brisbane, late on Saturday night, 4 June 1938, a Police Constable from the Valley Police Station found the body of Ernest Sylvester Lewis in Centenary Place near the tramway office with a half-empty bottle of poison beside the body. In one of the pockets was a note giving instructions for the disposal of his body. Following this a funeral service was held by relatives and friends at the Funeral Chapel, Stanley Street, South Brisbane and the burial was at Toowong Cemetery. Members of the Limbless Soldiers’ Association were also invited to attend.