23/678 Ernest Charles Beresford-Wilkinson, NZEF
NZEF Star/VM - Early NZRB casualty - 1915
The 1914/15 Star and Victory Medal issued to the next-of-kin of 23/678 Cpl. Ernest Charles Beresford-Wilkinson, who was killed in action on Christmas Day 1915 during the Senussin Campaign in Egypt's Western Desert.
Ernest Beresford-Wilkinson was born 21st August 1891 at Reefton, New Zealand. Ernest Calvert and Georgina Maude Louise Beresford-Wilkinson (née Mirfin). He was employed by the Post and Telegraph Department and was working at Paeroa when he was accepted for service with the newly-formed New Zealand Rifle Brigade (aka the Trentham Regiment). He embarked in October 1915, and on arrival in Suez, was promoted to corporal. At this time, the Senussi, a North African religious sect, had taken up arms against the British, encouraged and supported by Germany and the Ottoman Empire, and were engaged in pushing the British forces out of Egypt. With the campaign at Gallipoli still raging, the British cobbled together an opposition to the Senussi, the Western Frontier Force, into which the newly-arrived NZ Rifle Brigade was thrown. The New Zealanders travelled to Mersa Matruh by ship, and on Christmas Day 1915, at Jebel Medwa, near Wadi Majid, the force captured a Senussi camp and inflicted severe losses on the enemy. During this action several members of the NZRB were killed and wounded, including Beresford-Wilkinson. His death was among the first six in the New Zealand Rifle Brigade.
In a letter to Beresford-Wilkinson's mother, Rev. C. Houchen described the manner of her son's death: "There had been a sharp encounter with the Senussi, and several of our men were badly hit. Your son, Corporal E. C. Beresford-Wilkinson, made a valiant attempt to bring in one of these wounded men, Corporal F.O. Bridgeman, but in doing so he received a shot in the leg, and immediately after another shot through the heart; his sufferings were thus very short."
He is buried in Alexandria (Chatby) Military And War Memorial Cemetery, G.18.
Both medals are correctly impressed 23/678 CPL. E.C. BERESFORD-WILKINSON, N.Z.E.F.
The photo is a digital copy, not part of the sale.