BEAUMONT, Edward Harold
(Service number 24127)
| First Rank | Lance Corporal | Last Rank | Lance Sergeant |
|---|
Birth
| Date | Unknown | Place of Birth |
|---|
Enlistment Information
| Date | Age | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Address at Enlistment | |||
| Occupation | Telegraphist | ||
| Previous Military Experience | |||
| Marital Status | |||
| Next of Kin | William D Beaumont (father), 15 Wakanui Rd, Ashburton | ||
Military Service
| Served with | NZ Armed Forces | Served in | Army |
|---|
Embarkation Information
| Body on Embarkation | NZEF | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Unit, Squadron, or Ship | 13th Reinforcements Canterbury Infantry Battalion, C Company | ||
| Date | 27 May 1916 | ||
| Transport | Willochra or Tofua | ||
| Embarked From | Wellington | Destination | Plymouth or Devonport, England |
| Other Units Served With | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Last Unit Served With | Canterbury Infantry Regiment | ||
Military Awards
| Campaigns | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Service Medals | |||
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 |
Death
| Date | 12 October 1917 | Age | 21 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Place of Death | Ypres, Belgium | ||
| Cause | KIA | ||
| Memorial or Cemetery | Tyne Cot Memorial, Tyne Cot Cemetery, Zonnebeke, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium | ||
| New Zealand Memorials | Ashburton War Memorial; Temuka War Memorial; 2015 additions to the Tiimaru Memorial Wall | ||
Biographical Notes
From Temuka, son of William David and Emma Jane Beaumont of Ruapuna, Ashburton.
His younger brother Huia Beaumont wrote about Harold in 1991:
“Harold was born in Temuka on the 12th June 1896. He came to Ashburton with his parents, brother Edgar and sisters Winifred and Irene in 1899. Harold went for his schooling to Hampstead School. As there was no free-place system for secondary education when he left school with a proficiency certificate in Standard Six, he went to work. Accepted for the Public Service, he began work in the Post Office as a telegraph messenger. Harold and his brother Huia poured for hours over catalogues of steam and electric engines, motors and gadgets. Once they got as far as beginning to save up in order to buy a Bassett-Lowke locomotive. Huia made the money box - the ‘safe’- by punching a slot into a baking powder tin, and Harold inserted, from his wages, a whole sovereign. Unfortunately their mother got wind of the scheme and promptly turned the golden sovereign into an overcoat. Harold became a popular Postman. The family noticed his popularity by the number of Christmas presents he brought home during that special week. He was ambitious too and transferred into the telegraph branch. After being chosen for the telegraphists' School in the Gallery(Wanganui) he was appointed to a full time post in Takapau. Soon after the outbreak of war in 1914, when he was 18, he tried to enlist but was turned down because of an incipient goitre. However by persistent treatment with an iodine lotion, he overcame this disability and was accepted for the 13th reinforcements. Training was unusually brief and but one leave period allowed. Harold came home, took Mother to Invercargill to visit her sister (Aunt Minnie) returned to Ashburton and then left for Trentham and England. In Sling Camp training was continued for a few weeks. Harold was given one leave period of 24 hours in which to visit Edgar [his brother] in Hospital at Codford where he had been sent after being wounded in the first Somme battle in 1916. The reinforcement was sent to France in the following winter and had their first experience of the cold and mud, which was their portion through the wet summer and the autumn which followed. The field engineers strove gallantly to maintain lines of communication between Brigade Headquarters and the front line, and it was during an attempt to relay a line forward through the soft, muddy terrain and shell-holes that Harold was mortally wounded by shellfire. His mates got him to a forward first-aid post but according to the letter sent home, by one of the men who received him, he was almost eviscerated, and after asking the orderley to write home, he died the same day, 12 October 1917. He was lean, tall, handsome, lithe, fair, blue-eyed and full of fun and friendliness, cheerful, outgoing and considerate.”
Sources
Paul McNicholl's list of additional names for the Timaru Memorial Wall (August 2013); Temuka through the years: an informal history (Temuka History Book Committee, 2009); Cenotaph Sep 2013; CWGC; SCRoll web submissions by F Wakefield, 8 March 2017
External Links
Related Documents
No documents available.
Researched and Written by
Carol Bell, SC branch NZSG & Timaru Herald; Tony Rippin, South Canterbury Museum
Currently Assigned to
Not assigned.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License unless otherwise stated.