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1891 Dec 20 Born Dublin. 2nd son of the of the Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. John Henry Bernard, D.D. (Lord Bishop of Dublin), and Maud, his wife, of Provost's House, Trinity College, Dublin.
educated Arnold House, Llandulas, Marlborough College (where he was in the OTC.) and Sandhurst
1901 census at 32 Lower Leeson St, Dublin
1911 census at Sandhurst
1912 Mar 13. Gazetted 2nd Lieut Dublin Fusiliers. Gentleman Cadet at Sandhurst
1912 Apr - Aug . He was posted to the 2nd Battalion. at Gravesend,
1912 Aug - Nov 1914 posted to the 1st Battn. RDF in India, serving; with them at Mimednai-ar and Madra
1913 Nov 12. Promoted Lt.
1914 Nov 16. Embarked on SS Malda at Bombay and sailed 19th Nov in a large convoy
1914 Dec 21. Reached England
1915 Mar 16. Embarked on SS Ausonia at Avomouth for transport to the Dardenelles
1915 Mar 29. Reached Alexandria, Egypt
1915 Apr 7. Re-embarked at Alexandria
1915 Apr 11. Arrived Mudros . A note in reiments history says he rejoined battalion on 15 Apr at Lemnos
1915 Apr 25. Bernard was a Lt in Y company under Capts. AM Johnson and D French. Lieut. Bernard landed in one of the open boats, when many officers were killed and wounded. His Captain was wounded iu the landing, so that be was left in command of his company for twenty-four hours, when they lay out under slight cover on " V." beach. 'I'hc next morning; the Dublins and the Munsters were ordered to storm the village of Sedd-el-Bahr, which they successfully accomplished.
1915 Apr 26. Killed in action. Lieut. Barnard was killed when leading his men in a bayonet charge. Lieuts. Barnard and Andrews were together with about twenty men of the X and V companies, and they took cover behind a wall five and a half feet high. They were being fired at from a house in the village. Andrews stood in a sap made by a shell and was directing the fire when he was killed by a bullet through the heart. Lieut.Bernard then called on the others to follow him, and saying " Come on, boys," he dashed through the gap. when he was shot dead by a Turkish rifleman. He and his brother officers were buried close to the beach in a large rectangular grave.
His father’s diaries and other papers survive in Trinity College Dublin, so we can look into their lives and read what they recorded shortly after the fatal telegram had arrived from the War Office to inform the parents of their younger son’s death at Gallipoli: Bishop Bernard wrote: ‘...our dearest boy was killed last Sunday in action. Poor Maud is broken hearted. My darling Robert – it is hard to believe’. On Sunday the 2 May 1915 he further wrote: ‘The [bell] ringers [at St. Canice’s Cathedral] rang a muffled peel for our dear son’ and further on in the same entry we read: ‘ It is heartbreaking to write letters about Rob all day long. Telegram from [the] King & Queen’. This was not the only family tragedy, for his wife’s brother, Col. Herbert C. Bernard was killed in action at Thiepval on 1 July 1916.
CWGC buried at V Beach
