EVANS, Eric Sydney
| Service Number: | 847 |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | 9 September 1914 |
| Last Rank: | Sergeant |
| Last Unit: | 13th Infantry Battalion |
| Born: | Petersham, New South Wales, Australia, 29 October 1896 |
| Home Town: | Sydney, City of Sydney, New South Wales |
| Schooling: | Sydney Technical High School, New South Wales, Australia |
| Occupation: | Engineers’ Clerk |
| Memorials: | Sydney Technical High School WW1 Roll Of Honour |
World War 1 Service
| 9 Sep 1914: | Enlisted AIF WW1, Sergeant, 847, 13th Infantry Battalion | |
|---|---|---|
| 22 Dec 1914: | Involvement Sergeant, 847, 13th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '11' embarkation_place: Melbourne embarkation_ship: HMAT Ulysses embarkation_ship_number: A38 public_note: '' | |
| 22 Dec 1914: | Embarked Sergeant, 847, 13th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Ulysses, Melbourne | |
| 7 Feb 1917: | Involvement Sergeant, 847, 13th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '11' embarkation_place: Sydney embarkation_ship: HMAT Wiltshire embarkation_ship_number: A18 public_note: '' | |
| 7 Feb 1917: | Embarked Sergeant, 847, 13th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Wiltshire, Sydney |
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Add my storyBiography contributed by Sydney Technical High School
Sgt Eric S. Evans, Service No. 847:
Eric S. Evans was born in Petersham, Sydney, on the 29th October, 1896, and grew up with his mother Alice and his siblings Elsie, Harold and Raymond in Manly, Sydney. He attended Sydney Technical High School, graduating with high marks in arithmetic and architecture, and became an Engineer Clerk. When the war came around, he enlisted eagerly, joining on the 9th of September, 1914. He was deemed fit for service and was assigned to the 13th Australian Infantry Battalion.
At the beginning of the war, Evans was given the role of Sergeant almost immediately. After departing from Australia on the 23rd of December, 1914, he and his battalion went to Cairo, undergoing training for a while, before the beginning of the Gallipoli campaign, which began on the 25th of April, 1915.
Evans did not spend long in Gallipoli, suffering two wounds to his leg, but that did not shield him from viewing the horrors of war. The second time he went to war, he recounted; “It all came back to me – the flames, the rattle of gunfire, the random screams of shells and the splashes of water as they crashed around us. I could almost taste the spray of the salt water. All those details that I'd hoped I had lost forever came back. Even the faces of those men with me – some whimpering, others feigning smiles, some just with their eyes closed. All gripping their rifles tighter and tighter.” (1)
Evans fought in the Battle of Ypres in 1917, a significant battle of the First World War. In the trenches, there were horrible conditions that came with all trenches, disease, rats and lice, many of the problems exacerbated by the three weeks of rain which occurred at the beginning of the battle.
In October, Evans was exposed to poison gas, a horrific weapon not yet banned by the Geneva convention. While he wasn’t hit with any of the much worse effects, such as blindness or death, it did cause him quite some difficulty, and damaged his respiratory systems.
In September of 1918, Evans suffered a severe gunshot wound to the neck – one of the closest that Evans had ever been to death. He was immediately transferred to a French and then a British hospital, where he was treated. This injury kept him away from battle for the rest of the war.
Evans was thankful for the end of the war. He notes down that “Within myself, I am a tumult of joy…”, an attitude which was matched by almost everyone in the Entente.
Much of the information about the lives of soldiers who fought in World War One, especially information about the life of the soldier after the war, wasn’t recorded by the military. Despite this, thanks to the efforts of Evan’s grandson, Fraser Gregg and Gregg’s partner Jenny Hahn, there is a bit of knowledge about the life Eric S. Evans led after the war (2).
He moved to South Africa, and when the Second World War came around, he fought in that, despite the horrors that he had seen in the First. After WW2, he married a woman named Elizabeth, who unfortunately died of cancer. After the death of his first wife, Evans married Margot Peel-Yates.
Evans only had one child, Stephanie, who had children of her own, Fraser and Alison.
Eric Sydney Evans died in 1985, living for 89 years, despite all of his dangerous encounters, and near-death misses.
In conclusion, it would not be fair to look at Eric Sydney Evans through the lens of him being “just a soldier”, for the same reason that it would be unfair to look at anyone through such lens. Evans had a life of his own, his own goals and dreams, aspirations and emotions, likes and dislikes and more. He served his country faithfully, and continued to serve when he moved to South Africa.
Evans should be remembered not as a tool of the British Empire in a war driven by alliances and territorial ambitions, but as a person who, despite being caught in political conflicts, lived a fulfilling life.
Endnotes:
(1) Detailed in the epilogue of “So far From Home”, pg. 26 & 27
(2) “So Far From Home”, pg. 261
Bibliography:
- Research provided by Ken Stevenson, including school records and a general overview.
- Virtual War Memorial Australia
- National Archives of Australia
- “So Far From Home” (Eric S. Evans’ diaries), found by Fraser Gregg, edited by Patrick Wilson.
- Australian War Memorial
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