Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Before the War:

Alfred Ernest Shiers was born in April 1892 to William Thomas Shiers and Annie Nee Haire. He grew up in a family with 5 brothers and 3 sisters in Stepney, South Australia. When he finished school he became a butcher as a part of a business that he worked at with his brother, Richard. He married Hettie Isabelle Shiers and started a small family. In 1916, a year after three of his brothers had signed up, Alfred also signed up to World War One. Probably thinking, like most others, it would be an adventure, an new experience and a chance to serve the country after a plead for reinforcements from Egypt. He was brave to go due to the fact that the truth about the war had started to leak out.

When Shiers signed up he was 23 and 7 months old. He was 5’6, with a slight build. He had dark skin, with brown eyes and dark hair. On his right forearm he had a tattoo of an angel on a tombstone and on the other forearm he had a depiction of a sailing ship travelling across a sea.

Embarkation:

On the 11th of April 1916 Alfred Ernest Shiers boarded the HMAT Aeneas A60 to Egypt. A steam ship owned by the Ocean SS co. Ltd of Liverpool, England. This was one of the many ships loaned by the Commonwealth government of Australia to be used as a troopship.

During the War:

In 1916 Shiers served in the 13th Training Battalion for 2 months before he was taken on strength by the 50th Infantry Battalion. Alfred Ernest Shiers joined the 50th Battalion in July 1916 in Alexandria in Egypt. 

Private Shiers came down with bronchitis on the 9th of March 1917 and was sent to a hospital in Southampton, England. He returned five months later. Shiers was a trench man on the western front in France. Although there is no record of specifically wherein France. He fought straight through 1917 and 1918 without any record of location, injury or illness. Until, in June 1918 where there was the first record of a self-inflicted injury. As well as two more documented within the next month. These, and a severe foot wound a month later was what saw him to military hospital and ended his career as a soldier. Alfred Ernest Shiers left the English hospital to go back to Australia Via Somali in February 1919 and was discharged on the 4/5/1919.

After the War:

Alfred Ernest Shiers returned home to his family in South Australia. They moved out to Yundi, located about two thirds of the way from Adelaide to Goolwa. His family continued to grow on the poultry farm where he lived, and he took a job as a mechanic at General Motors Holden. His wife died, aged 41, in April 1937. He took this hard and became once again very lonely out in the country by himself. It seems that later Shiers remarried a woman named Esther Elvira Shiers. Alfred Ernest Shiers died on the 18th of July 1969 of unknown causes.  Alfred Ernest Shiers was Buried in the Derrick Garden of Remembrance in Centennial Park and will forever be remembered for his efforts in World War One.

bibliography: 

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Australia Imperial Forces Unit Diary. 1914-1918: July 1918 n.d., Australian War Memorial, N.p., accessed 16 March 2018,   <https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1345887?image=23>.

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Australian War Memorial 2016, 50th Battalion, Australian Government, Canberra, accessed 16 March 2018, <https://www.awm.gov.au/>.