Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Frank Ellis Silver

Frank Ellis Silver was born in November 1895 to mother and next of kin, Charlotte Emma Silver and his religion was Baptist. The Baptist religion is a strand of Christianity that when Baptized, the person is completely submerged into water, the water that the person is submerged in is usually a river as opposed to being sprinkled with holy water. The other main difference is that only true believers are Baptised as opposed to young children.

Before he was to be shipped off to the army, Frank was a printer who would work on the printing machine to clean it and change the ink. Old printing machines were large and required a lot of man power and ink to operate properly and without any ink blots.

On the 2nd of December 1915, a young Frank (19 years and 10 months) went to enlist in the army. He departed on the 27th of June 1916 on the HMAT A37 Barambah. He was a part of the 5th field ambulance. The 5th field ambulance helped out by taking care of the sick or injured in the trenches. If it was bad enough they would bring the soldier back to the injury tents for further treatment. They also, like most battalions in the war, would hang around in a small, cramped, makeshift room when they weren’t on duty.

The HMAT A37 Barambah left on the 27th of June 1916 in Melbourne. It used to be a ship belonging to the Germans and was called ‘Hobart’ but it was captured, renamed and became a transport ship carrying between 1’000 – 2’000 soldiers to the Peninsula.

As protection when running through the trenches to recovery dead or wounded soldiers, Frank carried the most common weapon soldiers carried, a bayonet. Bayonets are rifles, muskets or other long guns that have a dagger or short sword attached to the end for close range combat and also is an efficient way to save gun powder/bullets.

While in the war there were several occasions where Frank was sick and taken to hospital on various occasion between November 1917 to March 1919. Although it isn’t stated what Frank was sick with and how he got sick, I can only imagine it was because of handling the sick and injured but it couldn’t have been that bad due to him making it out of the war alive and well.

As an ANZAC, Frank would have possessed many of the ANZAC spirit traits.

ANZAC stands for…

Australian

New Zealand

Army

Corps

To have ANZAC spirit is to possess one or more of the following traits: endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour and mateship. I believe Frank would have definitely of had courage, endurance, and mateship because it would have taken a lot of courage to go back to the war after getting sick a numerous amount of times, endurance because of his job in the war and carrying the sick or injured to hospital tents, and mateship because he would of gotten pretty lonely if he didn’t socialize but judging by him coming back un harmed in any way, physical or emotional, he would have made lots of friends to keep him company.

After 2 long years in the war, Frank was relived of his services and returned home to his mother Charlotte on the 12 of December 1918.

After the war every solider gets a medal of honour, I don’t know if Frank went on to receive any other medals but he would have defiantly been awarded with the medal of honour which was coloured gold with a rainbow like pattern on the strap.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get Frank's unit diary and I was also unsure about his fate after the war but I do know that he returned home fine and may or may not have made it to go into world war 2. I am also unsure about when he died and if he did, where his body is buried.

From the information I was able to uncover about Frank, I know that he was a hard worker, he didn’t have a criminal record, he wasn’t married and he was fortunate enough to make it out of the war alive.