Contributed by Ron Inglis, October 2021:
Bank Clerk Lance Corporal Ernest Cecil Sidney, 25, enlisted in September 1914 at Grafton, NSW. In his service record there is a letter from an ‘Area Officer, Grafton’ saying Sidney was an excellent horseman and wanted to enlist in the Light Horse, but was not wanted at that stage, so he enlisted in the infantry.
Sidney embarked on the Ceramic from Melbourne, Victoria, on 22 December 1914. It is recorded in his service file that he left Egypt on 12 April 1915, so Sidney may have been among those landing on the first day at Gallipoli, 25 April, but that detail is not recorded. He was reported missing around 9 May.
Throughout the war, and for some years thereafter, the Base Records Office wrote to the next-of-kin of missing soldiers asking if they had received any information. Sidney’s widowed mother, Emma Sidney who lived in Susan Street, Auburn, replied that she had received a postcard from her son dated 9 May 1915 saying ‘I am well’. One soldier said that he had heard from another soldier that he recognised Sidney in a photograph of Australian Prisoners of War published in a Turkish newspaper, but Sidney’s name did not turn up in lists supplied by the Turks through the Red Cross.
A Court of Inquiry was held in Egypt in April 1916, and Sidney was declared killed in action on 9 May 1915. He was the third of 12 Auburn Memorial men to die on the Gallipoli peninsular. His name is inscribed on the Lone Pine Memorial at Gallipoli.
Ernest Cecil Sidney is honoured on the following memorials in Australia:
- Auburn War Memorial
- Municipality of Auburn 1914-1919 Honour Roll
- Auburn Methodist Church First World War Honour Roll
- Grafton Cenotaph
- Roll of Honour Australian War Memorial Canberra
His decorations:
- British War Medal 1914-20
- Victory Medal
- 1914-1915 Star
