Teenage soldiers and a boat full of blood
Seventeen-year-old Daniel Patrick (Pat) Lloyd of Christchurch was among the New Zealanders who landed at Gallipoli on April 25 1915. He witnessed the carnage when the boatloads of men came under heavy machine-gun fire as they came ashore. Pat survived and went on to serve in France where he won a Distinguished Conduct Medal for ‘gallantry in the field’. Fifty years later he took part in an anniversary ‘pilgrimage’ by New Zealand veterans, who returned to Gallipoli to retrace their footsteps and visit graves and memorials to fallen comrades.
Year:1915 (Recorded 1966)
Location:Gallipoli, Turkey
Teenage soldiers and a boat full of blood
Seventeen-year-old Daniel Patrick (Pat) Lloyd of Christchurch was among the New Zealanders who landed at Gallipoli on April 25 1915. He witnessed the carnage when the boatloads of men came under heavy machine-gun fire as they came ashore. Pat survived and went on to serve in France where he won a Distinguished Conduct Medal for ‘gallantry in the field’. Fifty years later he took part in an anniversary ‘pilgrimage’ by New Zealand veterans, who returned to Gallipoli to retrace their footsteps and visit graves and memorials to fallen comrades.
Year: 1915 (Recorded 1966)
Length: 02:08
Source: Radio New Zealand collection, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Catalogue Reference: 27762 Gallipoli memories: Pat Lloyd
People: Daniel Patrick Lloyd
Location: Gallipoli, Turkey
Tags: Gallipoli, Soldiers, Christchurch, Landings, Ships
Image Title: An Australian soldier lies wounded in the foreground, as hundreds of other soldiers move among the dead and wounded on the beach at Anzac Cove on the day of the landing
Image Source: Courtesy Australian War Memorial https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/PS1659/
When war was declared in 1914, only New Zealand men aged between 20 and 40 were officially permitted to enlist. However, many underage soldiers like Pat Lloyd managed to slip through. Teenagers who could pass themselves off as 20 or older would simply lie about their age. If they were turned down by one recruiting officer, they would wait until another man took that officer’s place and try again.
Some veterans say they managed to ‘get away’ at even younger ages. One unidentified man recorded at a 1960 reunion that: “I enlisted in Christchurch early in August in 1914, in the Main Body of the Canterbury Infantry, and remained with them while they were in camp ... where my age was discovered and I was tossed out as being too young. I enlisted the next day in the Main Body of the Artillery and went overseas with that. I was on Gallipoli and actually had my seventeenth birthday on Gallipoli.”(1)
There are also many stories of well-built young Māori men fooling recruiting officers and enlisting well underage. The Bannister brothers of Jacobs River, South Westland (Ngāti Mahaki, Poutini Ngāi Tahu) may have been among New Zealand’s youngest World War I soldiers. David Huihui Bannister began his wood-chopping career in 1911 at the age of 13, when he says he was already a “big, tall man”.(2) He managed to enlist at only 15 or 16, and served with the Māori Native Contingent along with his brother Tuhuru, who may also have raised his age. Two other Bannister brothers served with the New Zealand Rifle Brigade and the Canterbury Mounted Rifles.
1. Unidentified veteran in [Interviews with Gallipoli veterans at Main Body Reunion, Christchurch]. 16 Oct 1960. Radio New Zealand collection, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision ID247010
2. [David Bannister on woodchopping] 15 Mar 1967. Radio New Zealand collection, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision ID253282.