BRAVE NEW ZEALANDER

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 July 1927, Page 4

BRAVE NEW ZEALANDER

STORY OF THE WAR RECALLED. One of the places visited by the High Commissioner for New Zealand, Sir James Parr ,and the party that recently journeyed to Palestine in connection with the unveiling of the war memorial in Jerusalem, was Gaza. This is a spot well known to New Zealand soldiers. It was at Gaza that a well-known New Zealand soldier met. his death. He was Trooper A. H. Fitz Herbert, a Rangitikei settler, a man of 64 years, with the heart, of a boy. He was loved by all who knew him, and he was an inspiration to the whole brigade. On account of his age, he found it difficult to enlist, where he was known, but being of a very erect figure and filled with youthful vigour, he at last, managed to pass for a hale and hearty man of 40, and so he got away with reinforcements for the Canterbury Regimefit, reaching Egypt, towards the end of 1915. Immediately upon the return of the brigade from' the Peninsula Trooper Fitz Herbert applied to be transferred to the Wellington Regiment and became No. 3 in his own son’s section in a troop commanded by a man whom as a boy he had taught to ride and shoot. His great knowledge of horses soon won for him a place in the regiment, and his unfailing cheerfulness under troubles and trials of every kind endeared him to all. Early in the advance on the town through the orchards, Trooper FitzHerbert was wounded in the neck, but after being bound up he insisted upon going on. Later, however, he was compelled to seek medical aid, and on his way to the dressing station he stopped to attend to a wounded comrade on whom he was tying a bandage, when a burst of shrapnel mortally wounded him. He was hound up and left for the stretcher-hearers, bin even then lie insisted upon having his rifle beside him. This brave New Zealander died as he would have wished in the midst of battle, with his rifle in his hand. His last, words were: “Don't bother about me. Look after the boys.” On this grave Sir James Parr placed a wreath of palm and flowers.