Emanuel (Manny) Percival Davis was born c. 1888 to Rosetta (née Nathan) and Isaac Davis of Armadale, Melbourne. He attended the local State school and Acton Private School in England. The family moved to Morawa, an agricultural district 370km north of Perth, Western Australia, where Manny served 3 years in the CMF and worked as a commercial traveller.

Two weeks after the declaration of war, he enlisted on 17 August 1914 in the AIF at Geraldton, age 27. The photo shows him on left with an unidentified soldier, training in the first intake at the Blackboy Hill camp (near Perth), where he joined the 11th Battalion: No. 774 Private Emanuel Davis. The photo shows his unit marching out of camp to embark Fremantle aboard HMAT A11 Ascanius on 2 November 1914. They joined the first convoy (1st Expeditionary Force) from Albany, comprising 38 ships, and arrived in Egypt on 2 December 1914. The battalion - part of the 3rd Infantry Brigade of the 1st Australian Division - trained at Mena Camp, near the pyramids, from where he went AWOL from 11pm Christmas Eve until 9pm Christmas Day and was “admonished” as punishment. The brigade left Alexandria early April 1915 and gathered with the ANZACs on Lemnos, where they practised landings.

On 24 April, the brigade boarded troopships, sailed overnight the 100km to Gallipoli and was the covering force for the ANZAC landing on 25 April 1915, so was the first ashore at around 4:30 am. The 11th Battalion landed astride the Ari Burnu Promontory and struck inland to Plugges Plateau through the tangle of scrub and steep gullies. Like the rest of the landing force they were to be thwarted by the terrain and the Ottoman response and were held to the Second Ridge line, along which the ANZAC position was consolidated. Subsequently, the battalion was heavily involved in defending the southern sector of the ANZAC beachhead: tunnelling and sapping i.e. constructing trenches.

While his unit was in reserve, on 18 July Manny received a “shrapnel wound in the abdomen” but his record gives no indication of the circumstances. He was evacuated to the Hospital Ship Sicilia and died aboard the same day, then buried at sea.

27-year-old Private Emanuel Davis, who died of wounds 18 July 1915, has his name inscribed on Panel 16 of the Lone Pine Memorial, Gallipoli, Turkey (see attached).

His parents later moved to Johannesburg, South Africa.