Joseph Peers from Manchester worked for SA Railways as an engineer at the Petersburg workshops after his arrival in South Australia. He played for the town soccer team alongside other future Anzacs Thomas Wood and Peter Butt.
Soccer may have begun at the mid-north town in 1912, and they played matches against Adelaide clubs, Broken Hill and an Adelaide Select XI in 1913 and 1914.
In Adelaide he married May Moore at the Methodist Manse in the city on Christmas Eve 1913. After enlisting, at the age of 29, on Anzac Day 1916, Peers initially trained with the infantry but was transferred to the Australian Flying Corps. He received training as an aircraft mechanic at Laverton in Victoria and at Farnborough in England, before serving in France with No.2 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps.
He was with the squadron for the dangerous time of the German spring offensive from March 1918. They flew modern SE-5 aircraft and changed airfields several times. The Armistice found No.2 Squadron based near Lille. Peers used the army education scheme to do extra training after the war, and at one point worked at the Chatham naval dockyards.
He was returned to Australia and discharged in September 1919. Joseph Peers died at the Daw Park Repatriation Hospital in 1971.