Week 6 - Ernest Seward Renyard

[Merry]

Ernest Seward Renyard was the 4th cousin of Samuel C W Renyard who I wrote about last week.

Ernest was born in 1890 in Boldre, Hampshire, the fifth son of James Renyard and his wife Dorcas, nee Scott. He appears on the 1911 census already a Private in the 1st Battalion the Hampshire Regiment, at Aldershot.

I don't know if Ernest remained in the service between 1911 and 1914/15. His service records have not survived, but his medal card states he first served in a theatre of war on 25th April 1914 in the Balkans (in the 2nd Battalion the Hampshire Regiment, army number 8263). This is the same date the Australian and New Zealand Corps landed on the peninsula north of Gaba Tepe on the west coast, an area soon known as Anzac.

Ernest was missing, presumed dead on 6th August 1915, his body was not recovered, or if it was it was not identified. 180 men were recorded as dying that day, including 11 others from the Hampshire Regiment and 150 from the Essex Regiment. Their names are recorded at Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery at Gallipoli, Turkey which was created after the Armistice when graves were brought in from isolated sites and small burial grounds on the battlefields of April-August and December 1915.

his name appears on his parents gravestone in South Baddesley churchyard, Hampshire.