ANZAC SERVICE

Camp News, Volume 2, Issue 63, 7 March 1941, Page 6

ANZAC SERVICE

High Military Leaders Of This War

Among officers holding positions of high importance in the present war, who were associated with the New Zealand troops in the Great War, are Lieutenant-General Henry Maitland Wilson, who commanded the Australian and Imperial Forces which captur ed Libya and is now official administrator of Cyrenaica, and Major-Generai Eastwood, Inspector-General of the Home Guard in England, a force of several millions. A photograph published on page 5 of this issue shows Lieutenant-General Wilson and other New Zealand officers, some now again overseas, taken with the then Prince of Wales just after the Armistice. Lieutenant-General Wilson came to the New Zealand Forces as general staff officer, first grade, to the New Zealand Division after Passchendaele in October, 1917, being then a lieuten-ant-colonel. He was with the division at the second battle of the Somme in March, 1918, when the Germans broke through and the New Zealanders went into the gap. From then onward he was associated with them in many famous engagements, till they went through the Hindenburg Line, and on to Le Quesnoy. Major-General Sir Andrew Russell, now Inspector-General of the New Zealand Forces, was officer commanding the New Zealand Division. Major-General Eastwood whs military aid-de-camp to Lord Liverpool, then Governor-General of New Zealand. when war broke out, and he left New Zealand with the Main Body, serving with the 4th Australian Brigade as staff captain, on Gallipoli. He return ed to the New Zealanders after Gallipoli, to become brigade major to the 3rd N.Z. Rifle Brigade (“Dinks”), and in 1918 he became G.S.O. II at divisional headquarters under LieutenantColonel H. Maitland Wilson. He left the New Zealand Division in 1918 to command a battalion of the Riffe Brigade, which was his own regiment.