Member of St Philip’s Anglican Church Auburn and ex-pupil of both Auburn North and Auburn Public School, 6134 William Ernest Reynolds, 27, has the sad distinction of being the last Auburn Memorial man to die in battle in the First World War. He was killed in action on 31 August 1918. The three who died after him all died of disease/sickness.
Reynolds was a blacksmith’s striker. He was married to Ethel May Reynolds and they lived at 10 Union Road, Auburn.
Enlisting on 11 September 1916, Reynolds sailed on the Ascanius on 25 October 1916, arriving at Devonport, United Kingdom two months later. After several months training in camps on the Salisbury Plain, Reynolds proceeded to France and marched into the 17th Battalion, Second Australian Division, on 6 May 1917.
Five months later, Reynolds received multiple gunshot wounds to the thigh during the Passchendaele offensive in Belgium. He was taken back to a hospital in Brighton, England where he spent eight months recovering.
Returning to his battalion on 10 May 1918, Reynolds fought on for another three and a half months before receiving a shrapnel wound to the neck. He died at a casualty clearing station on 31 August 1918 and was buried in the Suzanne Military Cemetery No. 3, just on the north side of the river Somme. An image of his headstone is shown below.
Reynolds had been in the AIF for nearly two years but time in training camps, the voyage to the UK, and recovery from wounds reduced his front-line service to around nine months in total, still a fairly long time compared to many other Auburn Memorial men.
The Suzanne Military Cemetery No 3 is the furthest east of the cemeteries of the Somme containing Auburn Memorial men. It contains 139 burials including 26 Australians. All bar one of the 26 Australians were killed in the period August-September 1918.