Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

An article in the Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser Friday 28 April 1916 about the opening of the Memerambi Rifle Club also included the unveiling of the Memerambi Roll of Honour by Mrs Ellwood. The Roll of Honour was in a glassed frame but has not yet been located One of the names in the newspaper article was Ernest Bennett.
I searched through the Ernest Bennetts listed on “The AIF Project” and found 21 year old Ernest William BENNETT SRN 2627 enlisted in Brisbane on 11 Jul 1916, Ernest gave his mother as NOK living at Doyle Creek, Singleton, NSW. Ernest was assigned to the 49th Battalion, 6th Reinforcement and embarked from Sydney on board HMAT A40 Ceramic on 7 October 1916 the same ship as another Memerambi man, Samuel Kilgour. Ernest brother James Stanley Bennett also enlisted on the same day and was assigned to the same unit.
On arrival at Plymouth Ernest was admitted to hospital with measles. Whilst serving in Belgium a shell fragment caused a deeply grooved wounder under surface of his right foot with a compound fracture of right his os calcis, The largest of the tarsal bones.
Ernest commenced his return to Australia on board HT A38, 10 September 1917; disembarked Melbourne, 13 November 1917, for overland travel to Brisbane; discharged, 20 March 1918 (medical unfitness).
Ernest did not return to the South Burnett after the war but lived in the Singleton/Doyles Creek district until his death in 1989