Ernest Henry Melmotte Cohen was born 1 February 1884 to Clara (née Davis) and Lionel Hyman Cohen in Durban, South Africa. The family settled in Sydney, Australia, then Ernest moved to New Zealand, where he worked as a journalist for the Waikato Argus in Hamilton and served in the Volunteer Reserve.

Shortly after war was declared, on 21 August 1914, he enlisted in the 16th Waikato Infantry, Auckland Regiment of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF), using a pseudonym: No. 12/1048 Private Ernest Drummond, age 30, of Ponsonby, Auckland. Intriguingly, his record shows he had a “Scar from a bullet wound on the left side of his lower jaw.”

The regiment - part of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade - embarked aboard HMNZT Star of India or Waimana on 12 October 1914, joined the First Convoy at Albany, WA, and arrived in Egypt on 3 December. They trained at Heliopolis, near Cairo and left Alexandria in early April 1915 to gather with the rest of the ANZACs at Lemnos, practicing landings.

The Auckland Regiment was the first NZ battalion to land at Anzac Cove, 11am on 25 April, when Ernest was promoted Sergeant. They quickly joined the desperate and confused fighting on the hills and ridgelines above, retreating from beneath The Nek to Russell’s Top at the head of Monash Valley, and then back to Pope’s Hill and Quinn’s Post. “The carnage among New Zealand officers had been fearful.”* After securing the northern sector of the Anzac beachhead, the NZ Brigade were sent to Cape Helles, where they participated in the disastrous second battle of Krithia from 6 to 8 May (see separate entry of L/Sgt Augustus Rosenfeldt).

From August 6, as part of the “Breakout from ANZAC”, the objective of the NZ Brigade was Chunuk Bair on the Sari Bair Ridge. The next day, the Auckland Regiment was decimated, losing over 300 casualties in a daylight attack, and on 8 August, Ernest was wounded in action, whilst the New Zealanders took Chunuk Bair, the highest point reached by British troops in the Gallipoli campaign. But the Turks retook it by weight of numbers two day later. That same day, 10 August 1915, Ernest died of his wounds and was buried nearby.

After the war, the body of Ernest Henry Melmotte Cohen, who served as Sergeant Ernest Drummond, age 31, was reinterred along with many of the 662 unidentified soldiers of 944 buried at Embarkation Pier Cemetery, Gallipoli, Turkey. For 118 of them, a special memorial stone was erected, similar to Ernest’s (see attached photo), inscribed: “Believed to be buried in this Cemetery” and the epitaph:
THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT

* Gallipoli by Les Carlyon, 2001.