Profile

PURCELL, Ernest Edgar
(Service number 6/1961)

Private E E Purcell — From" "South Canterbury Roll of Honour", published 1916 by the South Canterbury Caledonian Society. (South Canterbury Museum 17/15)

Chunuk Bair (New Zealand) Memorial, Chunuk Bair Cemetery, Gallipoli — Includes the name of Ernest Purcell, listed almost half-way down the right column.

Photographed during a visit in October 2003 (Courtesy of G Purcell )

Aliases
First Rank	Private	Last Rank	Private

Birth

Date	7 May 1893	Place of Birth	Levin

Enlistment Information

Date	14 January 1915	Age	21
Address at Enlistment	Care of Miller, Timaru
Occupation	Labourer
Previous Military Experience
Marital Status	Single
Next of Kin	F. Purcell (father), Levin, New Zealand
Religion	Roman Catholic
Medical Information	Height 5 feet 9 inches

Military Service

Served with	NZ Armed Forces	Served in	Army
Military District

Embarkation Information

Body on Embarkation	4th Reinforcements
Unit, Squadron, or Ship	Canterbury Infantry Battalion
Date	17 April 1915
Transport	Willochra or Knight Templar or Waitomo
Embarked From	Wellington, New Zealand	Destination	Suez, Egypt

Other Units Served With
Last Unit Served With	Canterbury Infantry Battalion

Military Awards

Campaigns	Balkans (Gallipoli) 1915, Egyptian 1915
Service Medals	1914-1915 Star; British War Medal; Victory Medal
Military Awards

Award Circumstances and Date

No information

Prisoner of War Information

Date of Capture
Where Captured and by Whom
Actions Prior to Capture
PoW Serial Number
PoW Camps
Days Interned
Liberation Date

Discharge

Date		Reason

Hospitals, Wounds, Diseases and Illnesses

Post-war Occupations

Death

Date	7 August 1915	Age
Place of Death	Gallipoli, Turkey
Cause	Killed in action
Notices
Memorial or Cemetery	Chunuk Bair (New Zealand) Memorial, Chunuk Bair Cemetery, Gallipoli, Turkey
Memorial Reference	Panel 13
New Zealand Memorials	On Memorial wall, Timaru

Biographical Notes

Son of Frederick and Eliza Purcell, of 51 Taonui St., Palmerston North. Native of Levin.

Ernest was killed in action on 7 August 1915. His scroll and plaque commemorating his service was sent to his father (at 51 Taonui St., Palmerston North) after the war in 1921 and 1922 respectively.

Sources

Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph Database [4 Jan 2014]; Military Record - Archives New Zealand, Wellington Office Item ID R20803080; SCRoll web submission by G Purcell, 12 January 2019

External Links

Researched and Written by

John Sutherland, SC branch NZSG

Currently Assigned to

Not assigned.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License unless otherwise stated.

Tell us more

Do you have information that could be added to this story? Or related images that you are happy to share? Submit them here!