| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Lance-Corporal Ernest Piercy, aged 25, was killed in an accident “on active service” on 1 Feb 1917 and was buried at the Cabaret-Rouge British Cemetery at Souchez, Pas De Calais, France, due west of Vimy Ridge. The circumstances of his death are not known but he was serving as a driver in the 529th Field Company of the Royal Engineers (1st East Yorks). Ernest arrived in France on 18 Sep 1915 joining 3rd Division and was immediately involved at the action at Bellewarde in support of the attack at Loos later that month. He would have been involved in actions around Ypres in early 1916 and then on the Somme in the second part of 1916. Ernest was awarded the 1914-15 Star and the War and Victory Medals.
Ernest was born in Beverley the 31 Mar 1891 and baptised at the Flemingate Methodist Chapel, the 23 Apr 1891. His father, Alfred Piercy, born in Pocklington in 1861, was a Wesleyan Methodist lay preacher who married Edith Austin of Hull in 1886. Ernest had a brother Alfred Henry born 1890 and a sister Eva Ellen born 1893. Alfred worked as a bricklayer though the 1901 census records him as being a tanners’ labourer.
Ernest before the war was living in Scotland at Aberlady, Haddingtonshire (now East Lothian). He returned to the area and married Nora Ellen Hunsley at Leconfield Parish Church on 3 Aug 1915. Shortly afterwards he left for the Front. They did not have any children. After the war Nora remarried, her second husband was William Lundie of Beverley and they lived at 41 Westwood Road.
Ernest’s elder brother, Alfred, (1890-1967) served as private in the Army Supply Corps during the war and won the 1914-15 Star and the War and Victory Medals. Ernest is remembered on the Hengate Memorial, the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster and on the Toll Gavel Church Roll of Honour.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |