Studio portrait of 103 Lance Corporal (L Cpl) Ernest East, 24th Battalion from Elaine, Victoria. ...

Studio portrait of 103 Lance Corporal (L Cpl) Ernest East, 24th Battalion from Elaine, Victoria. A 21 year old farm labourer prior to enlisting on 8 March 1915, he embarked for overseas with the Headquarters Details from Melbourne on 10 May 1915 aboard HMAT Euripides. He proceeded to Gallipoli on 30 August and from December 1915 to March 1916 he was in various hospitals, first with influenza on a hospital ship and in Alexandria and then with enteric fever in Heliopolis, Egypt. After rejoining his unit he embarked for France on 20 March 1916. A gunshot wound to his left arm in July kept him in hospital in Etaples then on light duties until mid-November but a further wound, this time in his right arm, saw him on an ambulance train and to hospital in Rouen then Etaples, France. He served for a few months in AIF headquarters in London but in April 1917, was again sick and was transferred to hospital in England, only returning to France to rejoin the 24th Battalion on 7 July. In October 1917 he was promoted to Lance Corporal but was killed at Daisy Wood, Belgium a week later on 9 October, three days before his brother, Second Lieutenant Joseph Thomas East was also killed in action in the Battle for Passchendaele[see image H05634.] L Cpl East is buried in the Passchendaele New British Cemetery, Belgium.