Profile

BEAUMONT, Edward Harold
(Service number 24127)

Aliases Harold
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
Religion
Medical Information On enlistmenet, the medical inspection described Harold as 5 foot 11 inches tall, weighing 150 pounds, with a chest measurement of between 33.5 & 36 inches. He was of a dark complexion with blue eyes, dark brown hair, and was a Methodist. His eyesight was good, but his hearing was poor in his right ear, but otherwise in good condition.

Military Service

Served with NZ Armed Forces Served in Army
Military District

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
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 12 October 1917 Age 21
Place of Death Ypres, Belgium
Cause KIA
Notices
Memorial or Cemetery Tyne Cot Memorial, Tyne Cot Cemetery, Zonnebeke, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium
Memorial Reference NZ Apse, Panel 2
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.

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