Birth

Enlistment Information

Military Service

Embarkation Information

Military Awards

Death

Biographical Notes

Charles Lyall CORNELIUS was the elder surviving son of Charles William and Florence (Flora, née PURVIS) CORNELIUS. He was born at Timaru on 30 March 1893 and was killed in action at Gallipoli between 28 and 30 April 1915, just six months after embarking and little more than four months after disembarking at Alexandria, and at the young age of 22. He was baptized Catholic on 6 May 1895 at Waimate (as Carolus Lylse Longford CORNELIUS), and educated at Waimate and Timaru. He was a champion skater and also good at swimming.

Charles was a member of the Territorial force and had already registered for compulsory military training at Enfield, where he had been working for some time as a horse groom for Mr Reid of Burnside, Enfield. He enlisted for the Expeditionary Force at Oamaru on 13 August 1914 - the first in North Otago to enlist, and he was among the Oamaru contingent which went north on 14 August. He must have retraced his steps as by mid September he was in camp at Tahuna, Dunedin, with the 10th (North Otago) Regiment.

The next newspaper mentions of Charles are to announce his death. Charles had died on 28 April 1915 at the Dardanelles. Although his parents were believed to be residing in Timaru by this date, the sympathy of the Enfield community went out to the relatives of the brave men in their time of trial. The observations were made that that it was "news like this (killed in action) that brings home to a community the full reality of what war means", and that the families have "the comfort of knowing that their boys acted as brave men should act, by not shirking their national responsibility and being ready, if necessary, to yield unto their empire the supreme sacrifice."

Charles was a bright lad and had written home to his mother some interesting letters. In his last letter, written just before leaving for the Dardanelles, he added an eloquent and touching postscript: "I always keep the little prayer book you gave me in the breast pocket of my tunic." Lieutenant Nesbitt, an officer of the Otago Battalion, wrote to his own mother from the Dardanelles, describing the fighting and expressing his sorrow at losing so many men. He wrote: "Many of the very best are dead, including Private Cornelius, who was shot beside me, and many another good man. But they acted like veterans, and although they got no support for hours, stuck to their post splendidly and didn't give an inch."

Mrs Nesbitt wrote to Mrs Cornelius with the details. "I have been thinking so much of you since the death of your brave boy," she wrote, "that I feel I must write and offer you my most sincere sympathy.. . . The fact that our sons have done their duty so nobly is a great source of pride, but it does not make the loss any the less; and it was a cruel task to set them." She remarks that she had met Charles and liked him very much, and that her son trusted him implicitly.

Charles' grandfather had fought through the Crimean War. His four-year old brother Robert was killed in a tragic accident at Waimate in 1902. In early 1908 the old wooden two-storied building where his mother ran a boarding house, was burnt down. It appears that his parents went their separate ways as early as 1907, and his father was somewhat tardy in paying maintenance.

In 1915 Charles was recorded as the son of Mrs CORNELIUS, of the Stafford Street Registry Office. In 1919 a change of contact was advised by Public Trustee and medals were to be sent to Mr C. W. CORNELIUS, Sutton, Taieri, Otago (Charles his father was a groom at Middlemarch in 1914). By 1919 his legal next-of-kin was his father C. W. CORNELIUS, at 11 Cutten Street, South Dunedin. He died in 1935 and is buried in Invercargill.

His mother ran a boarding house in Waimate which was burnt down in 1908, when she moved to Timaru and ran the Timaru Labour Exchange and was a fruiterer. At this time his father did live at Stafford Street, Timaru, possibly intermittently. From 1916 until her death in 1937 Mrs Cornelius was hospitalised for most of the time at Seacliff Asylum near Dunedin and later at Sunnyside Asylum in Christchurch. She is buried at Waimate with her little son. The estate of C. L. Cornelius, amounting to £15.10.7. (stock-in-trade and military pay), was administered by the Public Trustee.

Panel 75 of the Lone Pine Memorial at Gallipoli bears the name of Charles Lyall Cornelius. And he is remembered on the Timaru War Memorial as well as the Enfield, North Otago, War Memorial.

In 1919 the sisters and brother of Charles remembered him in an In Memoriam notice in the Timaru Herald. A photograph of Charles is printed in Volume 1 of "Onward: Portraits of the NZEF"; a photo of Charles as a child is provided by a great-nephew.

Sources

External Links

• Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph record
• Military personnel file

Related Documents

No documents available.

Researched and Written by

Teresa Scott, SC branch NZSG

Currently Assigned to

TS